Dying with Dignity? The End-of-Life Discourse in the Two German States, 1945-2000

寻找“有尊严的”死亡是围绕死亡在现代世俗社会意义的辩论的一部分。哪里是“最佳”死亡地点？医院应该扮演什么角色？在医学进步的帮助下，临终阶段应该延长到什么程度？这些问题一直与所谓的“忌讳”死亡有关，特别是在1945年之后，其最具代表性的形象是在医院“匿名”死亡。在此背景下，本项目分析了德国两州关于死亡的话语，从内容和行动者两个方面进行分析。在同时代人看来，哪些因素决定了“死得其所” ？他们又通过哪些手段确保了自己决定的“有尊严的死” ？调查时期从战后初期开始，重点关注20世纪60年代中期以来辩论的繁盛时期。它结束于千禧年之交，因此也涵盖了统一进程。比较两个德国，一方面需要考虑两国不同的政治轮廓——这不可避免地包括国际视角——另一方面也需要考虑更古老的传统路线，以及联邦共和国和德意志民主共和国共同的纳粹历史。本书的出发点是这样一个假设：1945年后，死亡在两个体系中都经历了分化、合理化和科学化的过程，进而引发了围绕人类死亡的新的解释之战。因此，越来越多的行动者和不同利益集团出现在生命终结阶段，尤其是由于死亡的成本不断上升：教会、制药业、保健政治家、医生、社会科学家、媒体以及最近成立的非政府组织，如临终关怀和安乐死运动，都参加了辩论，从而对公众产生了越来越大的影响。本项目沿着“经济化”、“大众化”和“团结”的三个轴线，通过分析大量出版和档案资料（其中一些是以前从未接触过的）来审视这些解释之战的历史。虽然历史学家在坟墓和葬礼文化的背景下对死亡的话题进行了相当程度的研究，但死亡还没有成为当代历史研究的广泛主题。在这里，关于死亡的辩论被理解为在整个社会历史中具有地震学性质，这将揭示习俗、社会变革和主要规范结构。正如这个项目所预设的那样，死亡一直是谈判和调解过程的产物。因此，这项研究有助于当代历史领域的关键主题，如科学化、主体化和老龄化史等。

The search for a “dignified” death is part of the debate surrounding the significance of dying in modern secular societies. What is the “best” place to die? Which part should hospitals play? To what extent should the end-of-life stage be prolonged with the help of medical advances? Such questions were consistently linked to an alleged “tabooization“ of death, especially after 1945, its most representative image being the “anonymous” act of dying in hospitals. Against this backdrop, this project analyses discourses on dying in both German states, taking into consideration contents and actors. Which factors made for a “good death” in the eyes of contemporaries, and by which means did they try to ensure a self-determined “death with dignity”? The investigation period starts in the early postwar years and has a focus on the flowering time of the debates since the mid-1960s. It ends at the turn of the millennium, thus also covers the reunification process. Comparing the two Germanies involves looking at the different political contours of both states on the one hand – which inevitably includes international perspectives –, while on the other hand also requiring the consideration of older lines of traditions and the Federal Republic and the GDR’s joint Nazi past. The starting point is marked by the hypothesis that, post-1945, death was subject to processes of differentiation, rationalization and scientification across both systems, triggering, in turn, new battles of interpretation revolving around human death. Thus a growing number of actors and different interests appeared on the end-of-life stage, not least due to the spiraling costs of dying: churches, the pharmaceutical industry, health care politicians, doctors, social scientists, the media as well as recently founded non-governmental organizations such as the hospice and euthanasia movements all took part in the debate, which consequently developed an increasing impact on the public. Along the three axes of “economization”, “popularization” and “solidarity”, this project examines the history of these battles of interpretation by analyzing a large number of published and archival sources, some of which have not been accessed before. Whilst historians have researched the topic of death to a fair degree in the context of sepulchral and funeral culture, dying has not as yet been the subject of extensive contemporary history studies. Here, the debate on death is understood to have a seismographic quality within the history of society in general that will shed light on conventions, social change and predominant normative structures. Dying, as this project presupposes, has always been a product of processes of negotiation and mediation. Hence, this study contributes to key topics in the field of contemporary history such as scientification, subjectification, and the history of ageing, amongst others.