Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany

This book investigates Suicide by Proxy, labelled “indirect suicide” by early modern jurists. Suicidal people committed capital crimes with the explicit goal of “earning” their executions. Desiring to die repentantly at the hands of divinely-instituted government, perpetrators hoped to escape eternal damnation that befell direct suicides. This crime emerged as an unintended consequence of aggressive social disciplining campaigns by confessional states, Kathy Stuart shows, and simultaneously exposed the limits of early modern state power, as governments failed for over two centuries to suppress the tactic. Some perpetrators committed arson or blasphemy, or confessed to long-past crimes, usually infanticide, or bestiality. Most frequently, however, they murdered young children, believing that their innocent victims would also enter paradise. The crime had cross-confessional appeal, as illustrated in case studies of Lutheran Hamburg and Catholic Vienna.