Liselotte Kösters celebrates 100 years in good health. Proper diet and exercise would have helped her reach this advanced age.
Drensteinfurt – Only a few people are lucky enough to celebrate their 100th birthday. Lieselotte Kösters is one of them, in good health with a century of hindsight. To this day, she has retained her interest in the world, people, her environment, but also her courage to approach things, to express criticism and to defend her opinion.
Lieselotte Kösters lives on the first floor, she manages the stairs in her apartment on her own. “My grandson put me on a double railing for extra security,” she says. It’s cozy in the living room, and an apple pie is waiting in the kitchen. She baked it herself, “tastes better than store-bought cake and isn’t as sweet,” she explains.
In general, the celebrant is still extremely mobile, yes, everything goes a little slower, but shopping for small things, walking with her girlfriend and cooking for yourself – “you know what’s inside” – still works.
The elderly woman has someone to help her with the hard household chores, and then there is her family: her son and her daughter-in-law, who regularly do the big shopping with her and whom she invites to lunch every Sundays, four grandchildren and six grandparents-grandchildren. It doesn’t have an emergency button. But a cell phone, in case of an emergency, she only has to press a button and the four grandchildren are notified. They then contact each other and one of them passes. “My family is the most important thing in my life, I can count on it,” she says gratefully.
Lieselotte Kösters is sociable, likes to talk and would like to chat with others. Of her 14 longtime friends, she is the only one still alive, which weighs heavily on her. Although she feels comfortable in Drensteinfurt, she would be very happy if there were also cultural offers for the elderly. Half-day excursions to the museum or visits to castles, but they don’t just meet for a coffee, but for a real exchange. Drensteinfurt, she says, looks like a dormitory town.
Being active has always been important to the birthday girl. She played tennis for 50 years and even competed in tournaments until she was 85. Since then, she has limited herself to walking, swimming, pétanque and yoga. The latter is too exhausting for her today and unfortunately the Chi-Gong is no longer offered. She got her driver’s license in 1951 when her husband was at a spa, which was something special for a woman at the time. For a long time, until her eyesight began to deteriorate, she drove her car alone.
At 100 years old, the jubilee has been through a lot, especially the changes in society. “Life was calmer and better,” she says. “People’s greed is terrible, they want to buy more and more and throw away, it’s getting worse and worse.” Lieselotte Kösters has her own opinion on every current political issue and she says it too. In order to be up to date, she reads the daily newspapers. She was always interested in politics and also liked to be politically active, at that time still in the FDP. But she would no longer work there today, she adds. In general, the politics have changed, instead of working together like before, there is now a conflict because it is only about power and money.
Life has not always made life easy for Lieselotte Kösters, although she is generally satisfied. After a happy childhood in Detmold, where her parents ran a grocery store, she experienced war as a teenager. It shaped her. From the school office to the girls’ high school, he went smoothly to the compulsory year on a farm, then to the labor service. So that she did not have to work in the munitions factory or on the tram, she took over the management of a Reich labor camp in Oldenburg, for which she was trained in Posen. It is lucky that she was able to marry her Herbert Kösters in 1944. At the time, he was running a defector camp in Russia. He was therefore allowed to return to Germany and his wife to end his labor service.
The horrors of war are still unforgettable for her. She remembers her way home, on foot, in a tank, dead soldiers, countless atrocities, images she can never get out of her head. About the absurdity of the war, which also killed his brother in 1945 at only 19 years old. She wrote about her experiences in two books, which she did not publish. She would like to tell the younger generation about the war, even today, so that what happened is not forgotten and does not happen again.
Terror also dominated the post-war period, the soldiers who occupied the country, took their homes and destroyed everything there. Nothing was left to them, their only son, born in 1946, was sleeping in a laundry basket. They were only able to build a small terraced house in Detmold in 1960, until then the small family lived with their parents. Instead of working, Lieselotte Kösters cared for her parents. After his death she worked for the Landesbausparkasse, was active in telephone pastoral care and moved to Bad Meinberg with her husband. She remained there even after her death in 1983. The time of traveling to Poland, the Czech Republic, America, Canada, Russia, Hungary, Ireland and Italy began for her. “I saw a lot of people,” she says. She liked Masuria better because the people there were so simple and modest. She only came to Drensteinfurt in 2009 because her son lived there.
Lieselotte Kösters has no panacea to live to 100 years. But she is convinced that sport, healthy home cooking, without additives and with little salt and sugar are important. She recommends taking an interest in everything, including people who aren’t doing so well. The latter are especially important to her, which is why she doesn’t want flowers or gifts for her birthday, just money in a piggy bank. The money will later go to the Tafel, the hospice and the crèche.
Official well-wishers were expecting the jubilee today, and she will celebrate with her family and friends in August. So 30 adults and eight children will come together, she rejoices.
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