‘Tanner geht’ by Wolfgang Prosinger

Ulrich Tanner was 51 years old in February 2008 when he travelled from Cologne to Switzerland, where he grew up, to take his own life with the help of the assisted suicide organisation Dignitas. Tanner suffered from Parkinson’s disease, AIDS and cancer. His life was considerably limited by the diseases and marked by severe pain, which even medication could not completely relieve. The German journalist Wolfgang Prosinger accompanied Tanner in the last months of his life and had countless conversations with him and his friends about his life and wish to die. In the resulting book, according to the author, he has only changed the names and place of residence of the protagonists as well as a few other details to protect their privacy; otherwise it is an authentic biography and in-depth account of a person who travelled to Switzerland for assisted suicide. To contextualise Tanner’s individual story, Prosinger repeatedly intersperses chapters in which he addresses legal and ethical questions of assisted dying, considers palliative care as an alternative or takes a critical look at the role of Dignitas.

Prosinger's book was published at a time when assisted suicide was in a legal grey area and not readily obtainable in Germany. The text is a reportage, with the underlying interview situation only occasionally becoming tangible; for the most part, the events are described from Tanner’s point of view. Readers thus get to know his biography and personality and gain detailed insights into his suffering and the thoughts that preoccupied him throughout the entire process of his voluntary dying. The picture Prosinger draws of Tanner’s life and personality creates understanding for the wish to die. Not only does Prosinger show how severe is the suffering which he must endure every day, so that death is not a threat to Tanner but a salvation, but Tanner's personality is also repeatedly portrayed as highly reflective and rational, and his wish to die not as hasty but well-considered. Although Prosinger also addresses critical aspects of assisted dying in the excursuses, he recognisably strengthens the side of the proponents, thereby also dispelling most of the accusations and prejudices with which Dignitas was confronted at the time. But first and foremost, it is Tanner’s personal story that ultimately reads as a statement already implied in the quote from Franz Kafka at the beginning of the book: that no human being can determine the life and death of another, but must respect their deliberate decision to die, because only the sick person can judge for themselves how unbearable their suffering is. The text suggests that policymakers should also recognize this and create the possibility of assisted dying in Germany.