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

对“有尊严的”死亡的追求是围绕死亡在现代世俗社会中的意义的辩论的一部分。什么是“最好的”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死亡“禁忌”联系在一起，特别是在1945年之后，其最具代表性的形象是在医院死亡的“匿名”行为。在此背景下，该项目分析了德国两个州关于死亡的话语，并考虑了内容和参与者。在当代人看来，是哪些因素造就了“体面的死亡”，他们又是通过什么手段来确保自主的“有尊严的死亡”呢？调查期从战后初期开始，重点关注20世纪60年代中期以来辩论的开花结果时间。它在千年之交结束，因此也涵盖统一进程。比较这两个德国一方面需要审视两个国家的不同政治轮廓--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民主德国共同的纳粹历史。起点是这样一种假设，即1945年后，死亡经历了两个系统的分化、合理化和科学化过程，进而引发了围绕人类死亡的新的解释之战。因此，越来越多的行为者和不同的利益集团出现在临终舞台上，尤其是由于死亡费用的螺旋式上升：教堂、制药业、卫生保健政客、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，都参加了这场辩论，从而对公众产生了越来越大的影响。该项目沿着“节约”、“普及”和“团结”三个轴心，通过分析大量出版和档案资料，考察了这些口译之争的历史，其中一些资料以前从未接触过。虽然历史学家在墓葬和葬礼文化的背景下对死亡进行了相当程度的研究，但死亡还没有成为广泛的当代史研究的主题。在这里，关于死亡的辩论被理解为具有一般社会历史中的地震学性质，将揭示习俗、社会变化和主要的规范结构。正如这个项目所假定的那样，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课题，如科学化、主题化和老年史等。

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.