Healthy woman's assisted suicide sets off firestorm in Germany

The case has set off a firestorm in the country not only because of the way Dr. Roger Kusch has publicized his role in the death — holding a news conference in which he played snippets of the woman's last moments — but also because of the motives behind her suicide.

The 79-year-old Schardt was not in chronic pain or suffering from a terminal illness. She was healthy and simply wanted to avoid moving into a nursing home.

On Friday, five of Germany's 16 states plan to push the federal government to tighten laws on assisted suicide. They want to make it illegal for companies to profit from teaching people how to kill themselves.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who leads the conservative Christian Democratic Union, told a German television broadcaster Wednesday that she opposes assisted suicide "in whatever form it comes." But liberal politicians have cautioned against amending suicide laws too quickly.

"No snap decisions," Peter Struck, parliamentary leader for the Social Democrats, said this week. "No immediate laws that then come to nothing."

Suicide is not illegal in Germany, nor is assisting one. But mercy killing and euthanasia carry a heavy stigma here because of Nazi eugenics programs that killed more than 70,000 mentally ill and handicapped people before and during the Second World War.

He told reporters in Hamburg on Monday that he set up a camera in Schardt's home and then let her be.

"I said, 'farewell,' and then I left," Kusch said. He also showed clips of the tape in which Schardt confirmed that she was ending her life of her own free will.

Kusch did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Thursday.

In a farewell note addressed to Kusch, Schardt assured him that she planned her own death "smilingly and systematically."

"Should the manner of my death help you in your fight, my life goal — the freedom to die in dignity — will be achieved," Schardt wrote.

In October of 1939 amid the turmoil of the outbreak of war Hitler ordered widespread "mercy killing" of the sick and disabled.

Code named "Aktion T 4," the Nazi euthanasia program to eliminate "life unworthy of life" at first focused on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry.

A decision on whether to allow the child to live was then made by three medical experts solely on the basis of the questionnaire, without any examination and without reading any medical records.

Each expert placed a + mark in red pencil or - mark in blue pencil under the term "treatment" on a special form. A red plus mark meant a decision to kill the child. A blue minus sign meant meant a decision against killing. Three plus symbols resulted in a euthanasia warrant being issued and the transfer of the child to a 'Children's Specialty Department' for death by injection or gradual starvation.

The decision had to be unanimous. In cases where the decision was not unanimous the child was kept under observation and another attempt would be made to get a unanimous decision.

The Nazi euthanasia program quickly expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler's decree of October, 1939, typed on his personal stationery and back dated to Sept. 1, enlarged "the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death."

A total of six killing centers were established including the well known psychiatric clinic at Hadamar. The euthanasia program was eventually headed by an SS man named Christian Wirth, a notorious brute with the nickname 'the savage Christian.'

The tabloid Bild calls it "perverse." Germany's Health Minister Ulla Schmidt said "I reject this path categorically." And Jörg-Dietrich Hoppe, president of the German Medical Association, calls it "abhorrent and deeply schocking."

Ms. Schardt’s suicide — and Mr. Kusch’s energetic publicizing of it — have set off a national furor over the limits on the right to die, in a country that has struggled with this issue more than most because of the Nazi’s euthanizing of at least 100,000 mentally disabled and incurably ill people.

“What Mr. Kusch did was particularly awful,” Beate Merk, the justice minister of Bavaria, said in an interview. “This woman had nothing wrong other than her fear. He didn’t offer her any other options.”

Germany’s conservative chancellor, Angela Merkel, declared on a German news channel on Wednesday, “I am absolutely against any form of assisted suicide, in whatever guise it comes.”

On Friday, Bavaria and four other German states will push for new laws to ban commercial ventures that help people kill themselves. Suicide itself is not a crime, nor is aiding a suicide, provided it does not cross the line into euthanasia, or mercy killing.

But many here do not want Germany to follow the example of Switzerland, where liberal laws on euthanasia have led to a bustling trade in assisted suicide. In the last decade, nearly 500 Germans have crossed the border to end their lives with the help of a Swiss group that facilitates suicides.

“We want to make it illegal for people here to offer ‘suicide by reservation,’ ” Ms. Merk said. “That is inhumane.”