The Armin Meiwes Cannibalism Case Essay

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One of the fundamental taboos that has characterized the human condition since time immemorial is eating human flesh. Although some primitive societies have engaged in the practice – and some purportedly still do – the proscription against cannibalism is so ubiquitous and powerful that national governments have not felt compelled to enact legislation outlawing the practice because existing laws concerning murder and the longstanding natural prohibitions against eating other people are regarded as being sufficient. Indeed, even in extreme cases such as the stranded Donner party where survival was at stake, cannibalism is universally regarded as morally and legally wrong. It was against this backdrop that the gruesome circumstances that involved Armin Meiwes, a middle-aged German man was convicted by German courts of recruiting a consensual volunteer on a fetish Web site strictly for the purposes of butchering and eating him. To gain some insights into this event, this paper examines the facts about this case to determine why and what happened as well as how it happened and what occurred afterwards. Finally, a summary of the research and key findings about the Meiwes cannibalism case are presented in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

The facts of this case are not in dispute. The legal record shows that Armin Meiwes was a quiet, otherwise-pleasant 42-year-old German man from Rotenburg described by local residents who knew him casually as “the perfect neighbor” who, in 2001, located an individual, a 43-year-old engineer living in Berlin, Bernd Brandes, who expressed his willingness to be killed by Meiwes during their initial face-to-face meeting (Harding, 2003).

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While this mutually agreed upon arrangement seems truly bizarre on its face (and it was), the grisly story does not end there. As part of their mutual agreement, Brandes also agreed to be butchered and eaten by Meiwes, which the latter proceeded to do, freezing part of the body for later consumption (Harding, 2003).

Following a period of several months, Meiwes was subsequently arrested by German police and was charged and convicted for manslaughter, despite the absence of German laws against cannibalism per se (Cannibalism overview, 2018) At the prosecutor’s request, Meiwes received a retrial at which point he was convicted of murder for “the purposes of sexual pleasure and fro disturbing the peace of the dead” (Harding, 2003). In his explanation for this gruesome series of events, Meiewes simply advised that court on the first day of his murder trial that after the death of his mother in 1999, eating a person became an obsession. In this regard, Meiwes stated that, “I always had the fantasy and in the end I fulfilled it” (as cited in Harding, 2003, para. 3).

While these details are sufficiently abhorrent to shock even jaded observers, the actual events that transpired following the recruitment of a willing subject were even more bizarre and blood-curdling. For example, according to Harding, “In March 2001 Meiwes advertised….....

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