The Weimar Background
I
On
27 December 1918, just a few weeks after Germany’s defeat, the scientist
Richard Semon shot himself, wrapped in a German Imperial flag, in his Munich
study. He was allegedly depressed by the German defeat.¹Justifying one’s suicide
with reference to the defeat of 1918 was common among nationalist men in the
war’s immediate aftermath, reflecting despair at Germany’s failure. In a
similar case, Karl, the older brother of Baldur von Schirach, the later leader
of the Hitler Youth, shot himself in November1918. Allegedly, as Baldur von
Schirach wrote in his autobiography in which he tried to justify why he became
a Nazi, Karl committed suicide because he did not want to ‘survive Germany’s
misfortune’.² For these suicides, the German defeat, the revolution of 1918,
and the shift from a largely authoritarian monarchy to a seemingly chaotic
republic amounted to a vast upheaval of traditional norms and values. Their
known world had ceased to exist. Here was suicide presented as an act of patriotism,
reflecting the military tradition of shooting oneself to maintain one’s honour.
After
1918, contemporaries generally believed that times of general uncertainty,
political disorder, and socio-economic hardship inevitably led to rising
suicide levels. This obsession with rising suicide rates helped undermine the
stability of the Weimar Republic. The Weimar background is crucial to an
understanding of Nazi attitudes towards suicide in the Third Reich. The Nazis
and other extremist political parties attacked the Weimar Republic by pointing
to the high suicide rates. But not only extremist parties shared the belief
that Weimar Germany was doomed with record suicide levels. Popular newspapers
and ordinary people increasingly shared this notion. In order to understand how
this assumption gradually turned into a mantra, we need to begin with a brief
analysis of suicide levels and their contemporary perceptions. Then we will
turn to various discourses on suicide and finally to individual acts of
suicide.
At
the turn of the century, newspapers began to link suicide with urbanization and
modernization. Newspaper articles on suicide had carried headlines such as
‘Tragedy in the Big City’ or ‘Defeated in the Struggle for Survival’.³ Many
thought that the defeat and revolution of 1918 and the Versailles Treaty had
overthrown the existing order.
Observers
pointed to rising suicide levels from the mid-1920s onwards. ‘Our country has
been hit by an alarming suicide epidemic, which has reached a climax that has
to be stopped by every means ... This is yet another representation of the
enormously tragic fate of the German Volk.’⁴ Thus the Catholic Kolner Tageblatt
claimed on 17 November 1925. Generally, contemporary observers not only blamed
the defeat of 1918, the inflation and the Versailles Treaty for the increasing
suicide levels, but also the impact of modernity and secularization.
Things
were getting worse and suicide rates rose. The following 1925 article in Der
Berliner Westen, a local paper, was typical:
In
greater Berlin ... the terrible suicide epidemic ... is consistently causing casualties
... and it can be safely assumed that our people have not yet become so brutalized and indifferent, despite war
and bloodshed, mass murder, and revolution that voluntary death does not move
people and genuine philanthropists to help ... Misery is great, and voluntary
death persists. Each hour of failure makes us guilty, since other people’s
suffering, even if caused by themselves, is a concern for everyone ...⁵
Acts
of suicide should thus have prompted other Germans to help each other and
strengthen their sense of community to prevent others from killing themselves.
The statistics, however, suggested that this did not happen or, if it did, it
did not work. Suicide rates carried on rising. The general rise, however,
concealed wide variations between different age groups, and within these,
between men and women.
During
the First World War, the suicide rate dropped. According to Durkheim, wars have
a lower suicide rate, since almost everyone is drawn into the war effort. This
mobilization prompts a higher degree of social integration.⁶ Some argued that
during the war, the state authorities in charge of registering suicides did not
have the necessary staff resources to do so adequately. Writing in 1940, at a time
when many Germans glorified the experience of the First World War, the
psychiatrist Hans W Gruhle dismissed this claim and commended the ‘great
communal experience’ of the war.⁷ Of course, during the war, front-line
soldiers could easily commit suicide by exposing themselves to enemy fire, and
such cases would not be recorded as suicide. This might offer a partial explanation
as to why suicide levels fell during the war. Nevertheless, the rise from 1917
to 1919 and then 1921 is still striking, but we cannot say with complete
certainty that the war alone really led to lower suicide levels.
A
detailed study of suicide compiled by the municipal statistical office of
Frankfurt am Main in 1932 revealed that suicide had become a more common way of
dying since the end of the First World War. In 1913, only 1.15 per cent of all
deaths in Germany had been suicides. But in 1931, 2.5 per cent of all deaths
were suicides. August Busch, the author of this study, explained this rise with
reference to a drop in other causes of death, such as tuberculosis, in the
city, so that the usefulness of this particular measure is questionable.⁸
Female
levels were much lower than male levels. However, throughout the Weimar years,
female suicide rates were much higher than they had been in 1913. Male rates
only began to rise significantly above pre-war levels in the final years of the
Republic, despite a slight jump in 1926. More than 2 million young men had died
on the battlefields and in the trenches, so elderly people, generally more prone
to commit suicide than young people, formed a higher proportion of the general
population.⁹ With the deaths of so many young men, the surplus of women in the
population increased.
The
unemployed were more likely to kill themselves than others, many commentators
thought.¹⁰ In particular, unemployed men, especially fathers of families, were
more likely to commit suicide than single women without a job. For men with
families, unemployment did not just mean the simple loss of earnings. It had
much wider social ramifications. Jobless fathers of families felt unable to fulfill
their role as breadwinners for their families.
Such
men thought that they had failed to conform to social expectations about what
it meant to be a man.¹¹ In this devastating situation, many men committed
suicide. Since the winter of 1925–6, unemployment figures had been rising, and
for the rest of its existence, the Weimar Republic suffered from high
unemployment. From 1929 millions of Germans were unemployed. The existing
system of support could not cope, not even after crisis relief (Krisenunterstutzung)
for those ineligible for unemployment relief (Erwerbslosenfursorge) was
introduced in 1926. Most of the long-term unemployed thus had to rely on
welfare relief, paid by local authorities, which was substantially lower than
unemployment benefits. These cuts in welfare provision created a feeling of
hopelessness and despair and prompted, as we will see, many welfare recipients
to threaten to commit suicide. Victimization was a widespread feeling in Weimar
Germany. Ordinary people saw themselves as victims of insufficient welfare provisions
and the political and economic uncertainty, while their need for welfare support
constantly rose at the same time.¹²
Of
course, unemployment alone does not explain suicidal behaviour.¹³ Nevertheless,
it seems obvious that it must have been a factor in the rising suicide rates of
the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1932, the medical doctor Karl Freudenberg
argued that the overall suicide rate had not increased since 1918 as a result
of the inflation and mass unemployment, but rather because of the different age
structure, with more elderly people living in Germany, and a lower birth rate.¹⁴
Freudenberg commented on the suicide rate among the male population of employment
age: ‘Despite the especially adverse conditions, the suicide rate is thus
hardly higher than in 1913 ... This should prove that the main reasons for
suicide do not lie in the environment.’¹⁵ A breakdown of suicide levels by age
and sex surely invalidates this argument.
The
following statistical analysis presents a broad survey of the quantitative extent
of suicide in Weimar Germany. It furthermore enables us to identify potential
distortions of suicide rates by commentators like Freudenberg and their reasons
for deliberate misinterpretations of suicide rates. While conceding that many
suicides were due to economic problems, an article in the liberal Berliner
Tageblatt on 29 January 1932 concluded, based on a recent survey by the Berlin
Statistical Office, that ‘these tragic reactions to a desperate economic
situation have not increased so much in the years of crisis as is commonly
assumed’.¹⁶ A closer analysis of suicide by age and sex yields some further
conclusions. The more advanced the age, the higher the suicide rate.¹⁷ Suicide rates
among young women did not increase significantly under the Weimar Republic:
indeed they even fell slightly down to 1924. Although female suicide rates were
higher than they had been before the war, they did not seem to be much affected
by the ups and downs of the Weimar economy, except perhaps at the very end.¹⁸
Among
15- to 30-year-olds, both male and female rates were relatively consistent with
pre-war levels. The lack of increasing rates among 15- to 30-year olds may
conceal an increase among those in the twenties (a more precise generational
breakdown is unfortunately not available). Rates were generally very low among
adolescents. Young men’s energies may have been galvanized up to 1923 by crime
and street violence in a general context in which political activity was on the
rise among the young, although they probably did not affect a majority of them.
The
increase in suicide levels in 1924 among young men was most probably due to the
deflationary economic reforms that had brought the inflation to an end and the
resulting sharp rise in unemployment. It became suddenly much more difficult to
find a job.¹⁹ Men of working age had a higher suicide rate in 1924 and thereafter
because of unemployment. Women’s suicide rates were higher in the 15- to 30-
age bracket during the inflation, when women’s domestic role of finding food
and shopping had come under considerable pressure, and jumped in 1923 when this
role became almost impossible to fulfill. In 1924, the economic deflation and
the consequent rise in unemployment for men coupled with the mass dismissal of
female ‘double-earners’ had an almost equally severe effect. The great majority
of young women still worked and earned wages only before they got married, so
this age-group was especially vulnerable. Rising levels of suicide towards the
end of the Republic may well have reflected rising female unemployment levels.²⁰
Suicide
rates in the age group 30–60, where most men were working, or expected to work,
and most women were bringing up children, or were engaged in the part-time,
casual labor market, or both, were somewhat higher among those aged 30–60 than
among 15- to 30-year olds in the early 1920s but became a great deal higher
during the Great Depression.
Rates
among men rose in 1924, leveling off in 1926–7, and after a small decline,
increased again from 1929 onwards. This correlates neatly with the rise in unemployment
during the post-inflationary stabilization, the years of relative prosperity
from 1925 to 1928, and the sharp rise in unemployment from 1929. The mass
unemployment from 1929 until 1932 is clearly behind the rise in rates among 30-
to 60-year olds. So huge was unemployment that older dependents were now
suffering too. Suicide rates of males at working age were substantially lower
than in 1913 until the mass unemployment of the Great Depression in 1930. From
1924 to 1931, suicide rates of females at working age were much higher than in
1913 due to the rise in female employment and subsequent unemployment. Suicide
rates also increased among women of working age, reflecting female employment
patterns and a new understanding of gender roles. The female unemployment rate
rose, though not as sharply as among men, during the Great Depression.²¹ This was
also a difficult time for housewives, with the husband or father often unemployed,
and economic crisis hitting the household.
Suicide
rates in the age bracket 60–70 were generally two to three times higher than
those in the age group 30–60; the gap narrowed during the Great Depression but
was still substantial. The same pattern, though less marked than among the
younger age groups, is noticeable here too, namely a decline in the ‘good
years’ of the Weimar economy and a rise during the Great Depression. The same
factors were probably at work here too—unemployment and living standards. Many
of the people behind these statistics (those 65 and younger) were still of
working age and were hit by unemployment, perhaps more severely than younger
people as companies tended to make elderly, rather than young people,
redundant. Women were hit particularly hard. Female pensioners were affected
badly by the inflation of 1923, when many lost their assets and during the
Great Depression when the government cut pensions.
Among
those aged 70 and above, where almost everybody was a pensioner or a dependent,
suicide rates rose sharply during the inflation. This rise most probably
reflected the severe economic difficulties this caused for these people, with
savings and pensions losing all value. The suicide rate here in 1923 was
extraordinarily high among men in particular. Here too there was a decline in
the mid-1920s and then a rise in the Great Depression years, though by no means
as striking as that of the inflation.
There
was also a religious divide of German suicide rates. In Bavaria, largely
Protestant areas such as Middle Franconia had substantially lower rates than
Catholic districts, such as Upper Bavaria. Probably trying to prevent people
from comparing Bavarian suicide levels to others, the Bavarian Statistical
Office did not publish suicide rates, but only absolute numbers. This makes a
comparison to other Lander impossible. Some comparative material is available
in the national statistics however. Protestant Saxony’s suicide rates were
almost twice as high as Catholic Bavaria’s. Saxony was one of the most densely
populated and most heavily industrialized German states and had traditionally
carried very high suicide rates.²² Gruhle’s monograph on suicide offers some
revealing numbers for Bavaria. From 1919 until 1921, there were 19.6 suicides
per 100,000 of the population in Middle Franconia, similar to national levels.
Only 27.01 per cent of the Mid-Franconian population was Catholic. In Upper
Bavaria, with a 91.06 per cent Catholic population, on the other hand, there
were only 16.8 suicides per 100,000 at the same time. Presumably, Munich
suicides made up the largest proportion of Upper Bavarian suicides. Indeed, in
1922, 136 of the 251 Upper Bavarian suicides took place in Munich.
Contemporaries saw big cities, as noted earlier, as creating a suicidal
environment.²³ Furthermore, Gruhle noted: ‘In the countryside, it is much
easier to conceal suicides and to pretend accidents and illness, while in
cities, the statistical registration of suicide is more exact.’²⁴
Were
Catholic suicide rates generally lower than Protestant rates? In Baden, a
confessionally mixed area (38.2 per cent of Badeners were Protestant and 58.4
per cent Catholic), the average suicide rate for the years 1927 to 1935 was
31.2 per 100,000 for Protestants and a mere 18 for Catholics. Protestant levels
broadly reflected the national average, while Catholic rates were substantially
below it.²⁵ Protestant areas thus carried higher suicide rates than Catholic
areas. The Catholic proscription against suicide was so strong that it either prevented
Catholics from killing themselves or prompted relatives and doctors to conceal
suicides.
Rural
areas generally displayed lower suicide rates than towns. In the rural Buchen
district of Baden, the average suicide rate for the years 1926 to 1935 was 10.3
per 100,000. The corresponding rate for the heavily industrialized and urban
Mannheim district was 32.7.²⁶ Gruhle analyzed suicides in Prussian towns and
concluded that the denser the population, the greater the suicide levels. In
1924, Berlin’s suicide rate was 45.4, while the average Prussian town with a
population of 15,000 to 20,000 inhabitants had an average suicide rate of 22
per 100,000.²⁷ This rate still exceeded rural suicide rates. Gruhle blamed
cities for causing higher suicide rates because of ‘industrialization, more
conflict and the dissolution of traditional milieus (church) and ... dubious,
morally unstable persons’.²⁸ His statement reflected the anti-modern and
anti-urban sentiment many contemporary observers shared, above all if they were
writing in the Third Reich like Gruhle. Yet suicide rates were higher in towns
than in villages. In villages, religious affiliations were generally greater than
in cities, which might have prevented people from killing themselves.²⁹
Official
suicide levels rose in the Weimar Republic. Amidst the ubiquity of public
suicide discourses (discussed below), authorities may well have been more
inclined to report suicides than they had been before 1918. However, the
available evidence suggests that Weimar authorities largely used the same
bureaucratic practices when compiling suicide rates as they had done in
Imperial Germany.³⁰ The increase was therefore a real one. Female suicide
levels rose considerably. Socio-economic factors clearly did matter. Suicide
statistics reflected these changes, which affected people’s everyday lives.
This rather detailed statistical analysis has identified broader motivations
for suicide like socio-economic change and unemployment. Yet these statistics
hardly shed light on people’s personal motivations for killing themselves.
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