the explanations of the acts Similarly, Peter Kaatzer called some murders ”indirekten Selbstmord” – and collected a number of such cases and noted that the statistics of perpetrators of ordinary suicides showed that a majority of them were between twenty and thirty years old. Concerning indirect suicide he found that of ten women six were between twenty and thirty years old, while of thirty men only ten were of that age.868 In Germany and in more recent time this scholarly tradition, carrying the same ideological baggage, has dominated the research made on the problem. Helmuth von Weber clearly made that connection in his article Selbstmord als Mordmotivcalling it “indirekter Selbstmord”.869 Thequestion has also been studied by Jürgen Martschukat who uses both ’Mord aus Lebens-Überdruß’ and ’mittelbarer Selbstmord’, the latter taken from Hommel. In the classification of murders and murderers, he distinguishes these murders quite separated from murders committed due to insanity, a category in which also Auguste Wilhelmine Strohm is mentioned.870 Vera Lind, too, is influenced by Hommel and finds that the cases when murders were committed in order to be executed are hidden or indirect suicides. She also identifies religion as a factor in such cases.871 She sees suicide through drowning as possible imitation of the method of execution where somebody was drowned in a sack, symbolically cleansing of moral offenses. Her note that drowning left a body without visible injuries or signs of violence fits well with a murder of a child through suffocation.872 From Sweden the idea has won new strength since Arne Jansson has coined the often repeated expression ’suicidal murder’ for these cases.873 die damalige Wissenschaft nicht gewachsen war, oder die entsprechenden Aussagen der Täter nur unter dem Druck oder aus Furcht vor der Folter gemacht waren, muß dahingestellt bleiben.” 868 Kaatzer 1872 p 9 ’indirect suicide’. 869 Weber 1937, ’indirect suicide’ (quotation p 161). 870 Martschukat 2000a p 85 sqq, 171 sqq, Martschukat 2000b p 53 sq, 68, 73. ’Murder from tiredness of life’, ’indirect suicide’. 871 Lind 1999, p 17, 61 sq, 77 sq, 142 sq, 266, 337. 872 Lind 1999 p 331. 873 Jansson 1994 p 23, Jansson 1998 p 49. 244
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