It is a tragic episode in Claudia Effenberg's life that she has rarely talked about: In the spring of 2016, her older sister Sabine Köhler-Plahuta died. The mother of three was only 51 years old. "She had colon cancer. It broke my heart when I found out about her illness," Effenberg told the magazine "Bunte" at the time.
In the jungle camp, the 57-year-old now revealed how much her sister's death affected her. "It was a hardcore number. We had a wonderful childhood together. I admired her, I thought she was great. We had a great relationship." But six years before her death, she and her sister broke up - in retrospect, for a completely banal reason.
"She was a dentist in Mallorca and my daughter had crooked canines," said Effenberg. She then consulted surgeons and orthodontists in Munich, who advised her to have an operation. "Then I did that and my sister was super mad at me that I didn't fly to Mallorca to see it. She didn't speak to me anymore - six years!"
No one in the family informed her that her sister had cancer, Effenberg said. At some point she received a letter from her nephew with the lines: "Dear Ms. Effenberg, we hereby inform you that your sister passed away on March 18." She couldn't say goodbye to her sister. "It's bad when you can't say goodbye to someone because of stupid dental surgery. I never understood that."
Effenberg reported that she processed her sister's death with the help of a medium. "I met a really amazing woman. She told me at the time that she was in contact with my sister and that she couldn't leave this world because she was blaming herself. I should go to church and talk to her and say, 'Me forgive you' - and from then on everything was kind of different."
Her fellow campers, who had previously followed her story, reacted differently to this statement. "I think there are things between heaven and earth that we often cannot explain," said Djamila. Cosimo, on the other hand, said: "I watch ghost films, but I've never seen or heard any."
The jungle camp is available on RTL in a live stream and in full length after the shows.
