Heinz Hoenig (72) has woken up from his coma. His wife Annika Kärsten-Hoenig (39) confirmed this to the “Bild” newspaper. The actor has been in the intensive care unit in a Berlin hospital for around a week, where he is waiting for life-saving heart surgery. After an initial procedure, Hoenig was put into an artificial coma, from which he has now woken up.

His wife reveals that it will take some time before he is fully conscious because he has received “heavy anesthesia”. But she was already able to exchange a few words with him. "I stood at his bedside this morning and talked to him. He nods and has his eyes open. I said to him: 'I'm sorry, Heinz, that I look so terrible.' Then he laughed and beamed at me and slowly said: 'For me, you are the most beautiful woman in the whole world.'"

Hoenig suffers from a bacterial infection that damaged the stent on his heart that was inserted in 2012. Now his aorta needs to be replaced, as Kärsten-Hoenig also explained to “Bild” at the weekend. He also has a hole in his esophagus. “This is of course associated with a high risk.” Such an operation could last “between eight and ten hours” and is life-threatening. However, Hoenig needed the procedure in order to survive, as the doctors told the 39-year-old in the intensive care unit.

Hoenig used a living will to ensure that his wife, with whom he has been married since 2019 and has two small children, could decide on vital interventions for him. But since she didn't want to "make this decision over his head," Hoenig has now been taken out of his coma. "And no matter what Heinz decides - I support every decision."

Since the actor does not have health insurance, a call for donations was launched on “gofundme” a few days ago. Of the 100,000 euros needed, almost 82,000 euros have already been donated (as of May 6th).