The Case of Pastor Hayne and Suicide Investigation in the District of Litoměřice (Leitmeritz) in the First Half of the 19 th Century
Abstract
At the turn of the 18th and 19th century attitudes changed to the voluntary dead (as a consequence of legal, social and medical criticism) in the Habsburg monarchy. This "new diskurs" permeated through different state institutions and on the one hand influenced the system of teaching at the medical faculties at the Habsburg's universities and changed the medical law related to voluntary dead on the other.
This paper focus on the reception of this new reform (especially the medical and legal one) in the district of Litoměřice (Leitmeritz) and on the question how these new changes influenced the decision of legal institutions where the dead body was laid to rest. As the result of this closer cooperation between the state bureaucratic system and the new medical power, suicide was decriminalized "de facto" during the first half of the 19th century.