Das Leben nehmen

Suicide, Walter Benjamin wrote in his Passagenwerk, appears as the quintessence of modernity. And indeed: after centuries during which the attempt to take one's own life was regarded as a sin or an expression of mental illness, and in some countries even criminally sanctioned, a profound change has been taking place since the 20th century, contributing to the emergence of a new culture of dying. Increasingly, one's own death is seen as a project that the individual must shape and take responsibility for. Those who take their own lives do not merely wish to extinguish it, but also to seize it and give it new meaning. Thomas Macho narrates the multifaceted history of suicide in modernity and traces its reevaluation across various cultural fields: in politics (suicide as protest and assassination), in law.