Alice and Ellen Kessler

Identical twin song-and-dance duo chose assisted dying and requested their remains be kept in the same urn

- Patrick Kidd

Alice and Ellen Kessler perform on the German light entertainment TV programme Do You Love Shows? in 1963. Fred Lindinger/Getty

(Fred Lindinger/Getty)

The secret of the Kessler twins' success was perfect coordination. The identical German sisters first became famous in the 1950s as dancers, and while they later also sang and acted it was their immaculate choreography, each step the shadow of its partner, that made them famous across Europe and the US.

It helped that they were blond and pushing 6ft tall but the synchronisation of their routines was what really caught the eye. One German newspaper called Alice and Ellen Kessler “the most famous four-legged friend in the world”, while they gave their autobiography the title One Plus One Equals One.

“We were born with discipline and with discipline we will say goodbye,” Ellen told the German broadcaster SWR in 2022. As they lived, so they died: by assisted dying. “Our desire is to leave together on the same day,” they told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera last year. “The idea that one of us might go first is very difficult to bear.”