The death of entertainers Alice and Ellen Kessler, aged 89, at their home in Munich’s Grünwald district on November 17 has sparked renewed calls to reform Germany’s assisted suicide law. Identical twin sisters allegedly planned suicide with joint assistance.
“His wish to die was well-thought-out, long-standing and free from any mental distress,” said Vega Wetzel, a spokeswoman for the German Society for Humane Dying (DGHS), a Berlin-based assisted death organization.
The German Caritas Association warned that “romanticized” media coverage of Kessler’s death risked exacerbating the social pressure seen in recent years. “Older women in particular feel a responsibility not to be a burden on anyone and consider assisted suicide as a necessary course of action,” Caritas president Eva Maria Velskoop-Daffa said in a statement on the organization’s website.
The statement also called for a ban on advertising by organizations offering assisted suicide, along with other legal regulations on assisted suicide.
The number of assisted suicides is not recorded separately in the official statistics on suicides in Germany. DGHS estimates that 1,200 people across the country may die with assisted suicide in 2024. In addition, there were an estimated 200 cases of deaths assisted by individual doctors.
According to the German statistics office, 10,372 suicides were recorded in 2024. This was 7.1% more than the average of the previous decade. As in previous years, 1% of all causes of death were suicides.
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The deaths of the Kessler sisters have highlighted a major bone of contention in the existing legal framework for assisted suicide in Germany, established by a 2020 Federal Constitutional Court ruling.
Previously, Section 271 of the Criminal Code – which was introduced after much debate in 2015 – had made assisted suicide almost impossible in Germany, as it stipulated that anyone who assists someone in taking their own life could be jailed for up to three years. It also banned “commercial promotion of suicide”.
However, this was challenged in court by many terminally ill people, arguing that they were being prevented from autonomously ending their lives if they no longer wished to live.
It is still not permitted to actively administer a lethal drug to someone who wishes to die. This would be active euthanasia, which would be considered an offense punishable with imprisonment from six months to five years.
But the Constitutional Court’s decision established the fundamental right to self-determined death and decriminalized assisted suicide. This means that anyone helping someone who has decided to end their life cannot be punished for doing so – on the condition that the person ending their life makes this decision and takes full responsibility.
How to determine “free responsibility” has since been the subject of lively debate in the medical world, the German Federal Parliament, and civil society. Whether the conditions for this have been met must be checked by the person performing the assisted suicide and there is no clear procedure for this in Germany. “That’s really the problem,” Helmut Frister, chairman of the German Ethics Council, told public broadcaster RBB, urging a law on suicide prevention.
He argued that a process needs to be defined for how to verify whether a person is acting responsibly when deciding to commit suicide. According to Frister, this should include independent counseling by someone other than an organization providing suicide assistance.
Kessler case could trigger legal reform
Lucas Radbruch, one of Germany’s leading palliative care doctors, took issue with assisted dying organizations that counsel patients on their end-of-life options, as well as those that carry out or mediate assisted suicide.
“The problem with counseling in assisted suicide organizations is that people are advised how to do it, not whether to do it,” he told DW in 2023.
There are currently three organizations operating in Germany that offer suicide assistance to their members. Individuals must apply for membership, undergo counseling and may not receive medication for the first months of their paid membership.
Karl Lauterbach, former health minister of the center-left Social Democrats, told rhenish post The newspaper says the current situation is morally unacceptable because it is not certain that “people who take this path do not suffer from mental illnesses that impair their ability to make decisions.”
In 2023, lawmakers in the German Bundestag debated possible regulations regarding assisted suicide, and by a large majority adopted a proposal to strengthen suicide prevention. This year, a draft of suicide prevention law has been presented by the government. The current debate may hasten its passage through the legislature.
Editor’s Note: If you are suffering from severe emotional stress or suicidal thoughts, do not hesitate to seek professional help. You can find information about where to get such help, no matter where you live in the world, on this website: https://www.befrienders.org/
Edited by: Reena Goldenberg
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