Shift in opinion on assisted suicide

The chairman of the German Protestant Church (EKD), Dr Nikolaus Schneider, whose wife Anne has cancer, has publicly stated that if she decides in favour of assisted suicide, he will accompany her to Switzerland to help her end her life.

Assisted suicide is forbidden in Germany, where memories of Hitler’s euthanasia programme, under which approximately 270,000 people with various disabilities were killed, have had a strong influence on the debate.

In a two-page interview in the German weekly Die Zeit, the Schneiders, who lost their 22-year-old daughter to leukaemia in 2005, openly discussed their views on death and dying and admitted that they differed as far as assisted suicide was concerned.

“I hope that should I reach the point of wanting to die, my ­husband will accompany me to Switzerland, sit next to me and hold my hand while I drink the poison, even if it is against his theological-ethical conviction. I hope his love will be stronger,” said 65-year-old Anne Schneider.

“That would be totally against my convictions but I would accompany her because I love her,” Dr Schneider said.

n Numbers of German Catholics officially leaving the Church in 2013 rose to 178,805, almost as many as after the abuse “tsunami” of 2010 when just over 180,000 left. Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich said the statistics were  a  “helpful wake-up call”.