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Guest article by Karl H. Beine
People have been arguing about suicide ever since they got into the habit of evaluating the lives of others. Sometimes the value of life was determined by its benefit to the community, sometimes the self-determination of the individual was given priority. There are many examples of one variant or another. Long before Nazi Germany committed its crimes of euthanasia, there was already a debate about the sense and nonsense of protecting life, with the result that protecting life was gradually pushed into the background. After the topic was taboo for a long time after the Second World War, the controversies surrounding so-called euthanasia have gained importance again since the end of the 1980s.