An Old German Custom

Something else I learned about in Germany, which has also been covered in American press, was the the case of Armin Meiwes of Rotenberg. In 2002, this man was sentenced to 8 years in prison for manslaughter. In January of this year, he was put on retrial and found guilty of murder, and sentenced now to spend his whole life in the slammer. It seems that there is always question of technicalities in homicide cases, which I suppose a is a good thing: you get what you pay for, as they say, or the other way around. But I find this to be a particularly interesting case: Mr. Meiwes had a childhood fantasy of having a younger brother, so that he could eat him and therefore always be close to him. At age 42, he posted an advertisment on the internet, a sort of a personal ad, seeking a well-built young man for "slaughter and consumption." All folks have their fantasies, and Germany is a country of the 21st century, completely westernized and subject to freedom of speech and expression and whatever that might entail. Nobody had to answer this ad, but somebody DID! It was Bernd Jürgen Brandes, another German man, who apparently felt comfortable with this request, and maybe even it was his fantasy to be eaten, in the literal and non-sexual sense of the word. So, the two gentlemen met and, sparing the details, played out this dream. The problem was, that Brandes wound up DEAD!

But wait!

Wasn't that the plan? Did he not enter the situation as a consenting adult? It seems to me that Meiwes is not a dangerous man, he simply has a taste for posh meats and barbaric traditions. I can see that in the definition of murder, there are 2 criteria that must be met: aforethought and malice. Really, both are met. He thought about it first, and he caused harm to his victim (though it was welcome harm - so was it harm at all?). If the world were black and white, then he would be a murderer. But over and over again trials, novels, poems, and many other forms of life-representation and human judgement prove that if we're gonna give ourselves god-like status, where we decide that human lives are more important than all others, we must also admit that there are probably other variables at hand, and every one of those is different in every situation. By law, we cannot generalize, but by law, we do.

I'm uneasy about the verdict. To me, it seems like a violation of personal liberty, on the side of the offender as well as the victim. What happened is what they wanted to happen. Death was a sideaffect, and they knew that too. It seems like one of those, 'I wouldn't do it but it's your life,' situations. Governments should stop interfering with people's personal lives, and I don't mean by not stepping in when a facilitator is actually needed. Rapes, beatings, things that happen when one person's desires overpower the other's - that's when a third party is needed. So my gut says that this guy should go free, but my logic says that he should probably get some punishment, but not life in prison. I think the 8 years would have been good enough, and really only as a model for other people who might try to get away with it because it seems like an easy way to murder someone without getting punished. Argh. I think there is a movie out about it in Germany: Kannibale von Rotenburg. Watch for it in the states.