Bärbel Schäfer The TV star returns to the scene of the accident where her brother died

Bärbel Schäfer says she is still struggling with her brother's untimely death. Now the presenter and podcaster has returned with her mother to the scene of Martin's fatal accident.

On October 15, 2013, TV presenter Bärbel Schäfer's brother died in an accident on the highway. A loss that the 60-year-old is still struggling with today.

However, the untimely death of her brother Martin, who was only 46 years old, also taught her to say goodbye to people differently, "because I know that it can all be over from one second to the next".

This week, Bärbel Schäfer shared a picture on Instagram and explained why she had recently returned to the scene of the accident with her mother.

The mother wanted to visit the scene of the accident again

The picture shows a red rose stuck in a crash barrier at the side of the road.

Bärbel Schäfer writes: "If your mother asks you to take her back to the scene of the accident (...) to remember her deceased son and my brother."

Schäfer's brother died here at the exit on the A9 highway near Pegnitz in Bavaria almost eleven years ago after his car skidded on a bend and overturned several times.

Two days after the fatal accident, Bärbel Schäfer, who had also lost her partner in a car accident years earlier, visited the scene of the accident for the first time.

"Here, where his head was blown off his body"

In her autobiographical book "Is anyone up there?", which was published in 2016, Bärbel Schäfer describes in drastic terms what she felt on her first visit to the scene of the accident:

"The heels of my boots press into the meadow where his heart has stopped beating. Here, where his head was torn from his body, I search for signs of life."

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After her brother's car accident, it fell to Bärbel Schäfer to break the news of his death to her parents.

According to the book, her mother was still very sleepy. She continues: "Then this outcry, a bloodcurdling mother's scream. It was as if my heart was blown into a thousand pieces."

Bärbel Schäfer: "What would have happened if ... ?"

In her latest Instagram post, Bärbel Schäfer asks herself what has changed in the past eleven years?

"The view of his loss", but "the longing" would remain, writes the presenter, who is now also a successful podcaster.

At the end of her emotional text, Schäfer asks herself "what would have happened if ...? If he hadn't set off that day at all, if it hadn't rained? What if the tires had had more tread, or if he simply hadn't been driving so fast?"

These are agonizing questions to which Bärbel Schäfer, who has been married to publicist Michel Friedman for 20 years, may not find answers for the rest of her life.

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