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

• Applicant: Dr. Florian Greiner
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 315143844

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.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Dietmar Süß