BERLIN: Frieda Felger was 97 when she committed suicide, one of a growing number of elderly Germans choosing to kill themselves and whose case is fuelling debate about whether they should be helped to die.

Frieda, who killed herself on November 28, is far from alone in choosing to end what she considered a life of misery. She is now one of five who got help from Roger Kusch, a former Hamburg justice minister turned euthanasia advocate.

Kusch does not himself directly assist in the suicides as this would be illegal under German law.

But he advertises his services as a “suicide counsellor,” providing advice and support for those seeking to die.

He films his discussions with potential suicides, and showed journalists a video of his first “client” killing herself by taking a lethal cocktail of drugs in order to prove he was not on the premises at the time.

Kusch, whom critics denounced as a populist and provocateur when he was still in office in Hamburg, now charges 8,000 euros per case for his help.

“I provide a service. It’s of value, and in our society such things do not come free,” he told AFP. Frieda was the fifth suicide he assisted this year.

She would have preferred dying in her own home, but was forced to kill herself in a hotel room in the western town of Muelheim because police, who the previous day had searched Kusch’s premises and computer, had become aware of her case and might have sought to stop her, he said on his website.

‘Living on is sometimes as senseless’

In Germany, as in many other European countries, the number of suicides has been declining – except for those of older people, especially men over 75, according to official statistics.

More than 40 per cent of those who killed themselves in Germany last year were aged over 60 – 3,993 out of 9,402 – even though this age group accounts for only a quarter of the population.

According to Christine Swientek, a university researcher who studies suicide, the actual figures are probably much higher as most doctors prefer to spare families pain and public humiliation by attributing the cause of death of elderly relatives to “heart failure” rather than presumed suicide.

Many of those choosing to die are sick, depressed or just lonely and unwilling to “end their days in an old people’s home,” she said.

“Some elderly people come to see me just because they are tired of life,” Kusch said.

“Many people now live longer thanks to progress in medicine. But living on is sometimes seen as senseless. And there are many people over 80 who just don’t see the point of going on,” he added.

He has “more than 100 really serious candidates” on his list, of whom two-thirds are over 70.

But of the five he has so far counselled on the decision to die, only one was very seriously ill.

Frieda, according to Kusch, was just old. She lived in fear of a crippling fall, and was unable to leave her home alone. She suffered from shortness of breath and “restless legs” syndrome.

This, added to Kusch’s own self-promotion, has angered politicians, social workers and church leaders, and sparked a lively debate in the media on “the commercialisation of assisted suicide”.

In July, the Bundesrat, Germany’s upper house of parliament, called for “organised assisted suicide” or “commercialised assisted suicide” to be outlawed.

The lower house, the Bundestag, is still mulling the legal and ethical implications of the issue.

Meanwhile Kusch promises that he will work out ways to get round any future law that prevents him from helping others seeking to die.—AFP