The death of entertainers Alice and Ellen Kessler, aged 89, on November 17 at their home in the Grünwald district of Munich has sparked renewed calls for reform of Germany’s assisted suicide legislation. The identical twin sisters reportedly organized a joint assisted suicide.
“Their desire to die was well-considered, long-standing and free from any psychiatric crisis,” said Wega Wetzel, a spokesperson for German Society for Humane Dying (DGHS), a Berlin-based assisted dying organization.
The German Caritas Association warned that the “romanticized” media coverage of the Kesslers’ deaths risked intensifying a societal pressure it had observed in recent years. “Older women, in particular, feel a responsibility not to be a burden on anyone and perceive assisted suicide as a necessary course of action to be considered,” Caritas president Eva Maria Welskop-Deffaa said in a statement on the organization’s website.
The statement also called for a ban on advertising by organizations that assist in suicide, along with other legal regulations on assisted suicide.
The number of assisted suicides is not reported separately in the official statistics on suicides in Germany. The DGHS estimates that 1,200 people nationwide died with the help of suicide assistants in 2024. In addition, there were an estimated 200 cases of assisted dying by individual doctors.
According to the German Statistical Office, 10,372 suicides were recorded in 2024. That was 7.1% more than the average for the last decade. Similar to previous years, suicides accounted for 1% of all causes of death.
Calls for ban on advertising assisted dying services
The death of the Kessler sisters has highlighted a key bone of contention in the existing legal framework for assisted suicide in Germany established by a Federal Constitutional Court ruling in 2020.
Previously, Section 271 of the criminal code — introduced after much debate in 2015 — made assisted suicide almost impossible in Germany, as it stipulated that anyone who aided someone to take their own life could be jailed for up to three years. It also banned the “commercial promotion of suicide.”
However, this was challenged in court by several terminally ill people arguing that they were unjustly being prevented from ending their lives autonomously if they no longer wished to live.
It is still not permitted for someone to actively administer a lethal drug to a person who wishes to die. That would be active euthanasia, considered a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment for six months to five years.
But the ruling by the Constitutional Court established the fundamental right to a self-determined death and decriminalized assisted suicide. It means that any person helping an individual who has chosen to end their life cannot be penalized for doing so — on the condition that the person who ends their life makes that decision freely and carries full responsibility.
How to determine “free responsibility” has since been a subject of lively debate in the medical world, in the German Federal Parliament and civil society. Whether the conditions for this are met must be checked by the person assisting in the suicide and for that, there is no clear procedure in Germany. “That is precisely the problem,” Helmut Frister, the chairman of the German Ethics Council, told public broadcaster RBB, urging a law on suicide prevention.
He argued that a procedure needs to be defined how to verify whether someone is acting freely and responsibly when deciding to commit suicide. According to Frister, this should include independent counselling by someone other than an organization offering assistance with suicide.
Kessler case could precipitate legal reform
Lukas Radbruch, one of the leading palliative care doctors in Germany, raised the problem of assisted dying organizations that counsel patients on their end-of-life choices also being the ones carrying out or mediating assisted suicide.
“The problem with consultations at assisted suicide organizations is that people are more likely to be advised on how to do it, not whether to do it,” he told DW in 2023.
Three organizations currently operate in Germany, offering assistance with suicide to their members. Individuals have to apply for membership, undergo counselling and may not receive medication for the first months of their paid membership.
Former Health Minister Karl Lauterbach of the center-left Social Democrats told the Rheinische Post newspaper that the current situation is ethically unacceptable because it is not certain “that people who take this path do not suffer from mental illnesses that impair their ability to make decisions.”
In 2023, lawmakers of the German Bundestag debated possible regulations regarding assisted suicide, adopting with a large majority a resolution to strengthen suicide prevention. This year, a draft suicide prevention law has been presented by the government. The current debate could precipitate its passage through the legislature.
Editor’s note: If you are suffering from serious emotional strain or suicidal thoughts, do not hesitate to seek professional help. You can find information on where to find such help, no matter where you live in the world, at this website: https://www.befrienders.org/
Edited by: Rina Goldenberg
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