What eventually had to happen, has happened. The icon has left us.

Lys Assia wasn’t just a grande dame – her status in the context of Eurovision was much more sacred. If anybody ever embodied divinity in the world of Eurovision, it was her. But she managed to be both a goddess and an approachable artist. When I met her a few years ago, she didn’t just take selfies with us. She talked to us, was cordial, funny, and miraculously both a diva and down to earth at the same time.

My very first encounter with Lys Assia, the artist, was when I was a little child in the late 1970s. I still knew nothing of Eurovision when my grandfather would play and sing his favourite song ever, “O mein Papa”, over and over. He loved it so much. It was only twenty years later, when I became a real Eurovision fan, that I learned about Lys Assia and that it was her who sang my late grandpa’s favourite song.

“O mein Papa” was probably her biggest success in the real world. But her unique success in the Eurovision world, winning the first contest ever, made her an icon of our world, a world that wouldn’t be the same without her. She was Eurovision. She was one of us. While my selfie with her got lost, the memories of meeting her will stay. Just like Lys Assia, the goddess of Eurovision, will somehow stay with all of us.

Tschüss, Lys. Rest in peace.