Maximilian Schulz, you are studying social work in Munich and you live with considerable physical limitations. Which are they?
Ursula Kals
Editor in business, responsible for “Young People Write”.
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When I was six years old, I developed an aggressive form of children's rheumatism that affects all joints.
I have lived in pain ever since.
Thanks to the latest medication, I have the disease under control.
But because of all the cortisone I have osteoporosis and short stature.
Still, you graduated from high school.
That was difficult, inclusion wasn't an issue at my high school in Munich at the time.
The school was ready to move the classroom to the first floor, but the art, bio and physics room were at the top.
Was there no elevator in the school?
No, it was refused to build that.
I could switch to a school where people with disabilities go, was the reason.
You didn't want that?
Yes, because I had good friends who carried me up and down the stairs.
Canceling that was out of the question for me.
Years later a lift was built because a schoolgirl was paraplegic in a skiing accident.
I then had the honor of doing the maiden voyage for my graduation ceremony.
Could it have been easier for you at a barrier-free school?
Because of my illness, I spent a lot of time in the hospital because therapies weren't working.
I was often in the children's clinic in Garmisch Partenkirchen.
I was very annoyed that there was such gallows humor being faked.
I didn't want to be reduced to just the disease.
But keep your distance.
Yes, I wanted to talk about other topics than always just about the disease.
.
I didn't want to be asked every day how I was doing.
I had to deal with that myself.
Like everyone else, I wanted to rant about teachers, play games, I felt like classmate relationships.
Have you managed to keep disease out of part of your life?
I think so.
My circle of friends is 100 percent made up of other people.
But I had a match on a dating platform with a woman in a wheelchair.
In Garmisch in the clinic, friendships developed that I didn't have to cultivate outside because we met there.
Another turning point came five years ago, a paraplegia.
Since then I've been stuck in a wheelchair.
That had another effect.
I perceived myself as disabled and have seen myself as a need for care ever since.
Before that, I went to parties in bars and clubs and was able to heat the city at night with my electric wheelchair.
All of that has changed with the cross-section.
Did you accept that for yourself?
I didn't accept that.
That was more of a gloomy insight.
I moved in with my mother.
The nursing staff had to come every day now because I couldn't even go to the toilet on my own.
But it didn't come after 7 p.m.
Then we had to organize it as a family.
That was only changed after a grueling dispute with authorities that lasted for months.
My degree of disability was already at 100. It doesn't get any higher.
You almost have to get depressed.
I have depressions.
I went to a psychologist as a child and never found that stigmatizing because I had the feeling that it made me interesting.
In addition to the stress of the disease, there was a complicated family situation, keyword blended family.