December 1, the date on which I am writing this blog, is the birthday of perhaps the most famous living cannibal, the German named Armin Meiwes. He became famous around the globe when he was arrested in December 2002 for killing and eating a willing volunteer he had met on the Internet in 2001, a man named Bernd-Jürgen Brandes, who had helped sever and cook his own penis before being finished off and filleted by Meiwes. Movies have been made based on the events, from reenactments like Dora’s Cannibal to fantasies like Weisz’s Grimm Love. Songs have been written about him and sensationalised retellings haunt our documentaries, often inexplicably comparing him to Hannibal Lecter.
Meiwes was born in Essen in 1961, and was raised by his stern and controlling mother after his father and half-brother moved out, not unlike the story of Ed Gein, who tried to resurrect his severe and hard-hearted mother by killing and eating the genitals of local women in Plainfield Wisconsin. Armin Meiwes, hopelessly devoted to his late mother as he brooded in his thirty-room house, sometimes dressing in her clothes and impersonating her voice, was not dissimilar to Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s film Psycho, which was based on the Gein murders. Many have tried to pin his later conduct on his childhood feelings of abandonment and helplessness although, if that were the case, we would expect millions of similar cases around the world. Maybe there are, but they don’t get caught?
At any rate, young Meiwes developed a taste for cannibalism (sometimes called vorarephilia) from reading fairy tales, particularly the Grimm Brothers’ Hansel and Gretel, in which abandoned children almost get eaten by a witch. The witch, we might note, was the only adult to show them any affection, even though her ulterior motives were clear, at least to the children who were reading the story. The Grimms wrote their fairy tales near Rotenburg, where Meiwes killed and butchered his friend. You may also remember (at least, Fannibals will) that Hannibal Lecter referred to this fairy-tale when he was serving up dinner to Abel Gideon; Gideon’s own leg, smoked in candy apples and thyme, glazed, and served on a sugar cane quill.
Meiwes fantasy of eating and incorporating a brother culminated in 2001 in him advertising on a fetish website called The Cannibal Café for “a well-built 18 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed”. The only reply that seemed sincere, indeed eager, was from Brandes, who was not really well-built or 18-30, but fitted the bill because he was determined to be eaten.
They got together and, after getting to know each other (which included slicing off Brandes’ penis and cooking it), Meiwes left his friend to bleed out in the bath, and then proceeded to butcher his carcass and eat the meat, in a variety of cuts, over several months.
In case there are still a few psychologists and journalists who haven’t yet pontificated on Meiwes and Brandes, this week we consider a 2023 UK Channel 5 documentary called The Cannibal Next Door, directed by Calum Farmer. This is quite a good reenactment of the events, although like many others, it relies too heavily on brooding, portentous music and opinions from experts, all of whom are universally repulsed by the cannibalism, a repulsion that Meiwes and many of his correspondents clearly did not share.
“It had broken humanity’s last great taboo.”
Trigger warning: the real Meiwes (seeing it’s his birthday): This website claims it has actual leaked stills from Meiwes’ video. If you don’t like pictures of chopped up humans, maybe skip the link. They look fake to me, but this Reddit reader swears they are real.
Meiwes is still in jail in Germany, not for cannibalism, which is still not a crime, but for murder, which is absurd since Brandes wanted to die, and was in fact obsessed with being slaughtered and eaten. If anything, Meiwes is guilty of assisting a suicide. There was no law in Germany against eating a human.
We know so much about the case because Meiwes was very open in describing what happened, even videotaping the whole process of slaughtering and butchering. The jury in his case watched this video, and reportedly turned quite green, but it seems likely that they would have also done so had they been made to watch some of the horror clips of cruelty and killing in abattoirs that are abundant on YouTube. His lawyer argued:
“We say it is neither murder or manslaughter, but killing on demand. My client is not a monster.”
As it was clearly not murder and there was no law against eating a corpse, Meiwes was sentenced for manslaughter and given an 8½ year sentence. Public outrage resulted in a retrial which then found him guilty of murder, on the devious premise that Brandes had been mentally incapacitated by depression, and therefore open for manipulation by his killer. He was sentenced to life, which in Germany requires a minimum of fifteen years imprisonment. Meiwes has already served more than that.
Meiwes believed that he did nothing wrong. It seems that the only thing he can see as a moral failing is not the fact that he ate human meat, but that he ate any meat; he subsequently became an environmentalist and a vegetarian, both of which would obviate eating any flesh, including human. His simple claim in his defence was that, unlike pigs, sheep, cows, chickens and other animals, here was a willing victim who consented to, indeed demanded, his own slaughter and consumption. Is it not clearly more ethical to eat an animal who wants to be eaten, whatever the species, than one who does not?
The Cannibal Guy 