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In the past week, from a criminalist point of view, I was amazed three times and pleased once.
These numbers are likely not accurate;
it could have been more.
But I can definitely remember those occasions.
The first time wondering occurred when a killing crime against a vertebrate, more precisely a beaver, was discovered.
He was found wounded, a suspected perpetrator was either absent or fleeting and could not be found.
According to the report, the responsible (murder) commission was convinced that an accident or a suicide attempt would be ruled out.
I haven't heard from the matter since.
The second opportunity for wondering arose when I learned that Mr. Kirk Douglas, the actor who played Odysseus (1954), Spartacus (1960) and Vincent van Gogh (1956), who had recently died at the age of 104, had been in vain some time ago tried to kiss Ms. Senta Berger, an Inge Meysel with Hollywood experience who presented us with all kinds of wonderful female characters in such beautiful films as "Young People Need Love" (1961), "Always Trouble with the Bed" (1961) and " The dissolute life of the Marquis de Sade "(1969) delighted, but also shocked with insights into the world of crime, for example in" When killers lie in wait "(1967)," The old Germanic peoples drove madly "(1972) or "On Balance Murder" (1975).
We don't want to comment on Kirk Douglas, the inventor of the dimple, or on OW Fischer, an artist who always had an excellent haircut, but who died 17 years ago at the age of 88, and also "the fast Gerdi" (1989 to 2004) should we don't care, after we want to mention that she also shot “With fifty men kiss differently” (1999) and “You don't kiss nice neighbors” (2006), which shouldn't have any deep psychological connection to Kirk Douglas.
The third opportunity was much more dramatic and concerned what at first glance was an extremely unclear process in Elbestrasse in Frankfurt, a location where, as old Rödelheim residents and any night owls passing through know, retired senior students and the professor very rarely stroll at 2 a.m. at night Immanuel Rath can be regarded as a completely unknown fairy tale figure.
There, according to a widespread report, two (!) Young men (!) With their (plural!) “Off-road vehicles” are said to have seriously injured and tried to kill a 52-year-old “passer-by” (pedestrian) when they “initially tried to kill him and then rolled over «, whereupon they fled.
One was caught on the run, the other "turned himself in" in Offenbach.
The victim is seriously injured in hospital and cannot be questioned.
Thomas Fischer
Born in 1953, is a legal scholar and was Chairman of the 2nd Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice.
He is the author of an annually revised standard short commentary on the criminal code and numerous other specialist books.
The joyful opportunity is quickly described: A 16-year-old girl disappeared, was reported missing by her parents, and recently reappeared safely in France.
The "alleged" violent crime, the outline of which was beginning to appear in the press, was canceled again.
Everyone on the Internet was very happy for the poor parents.
What do these events have in common and why do I mention them?
I am assuming, dear readers, that I have not reported anything really new to you, but that you are, more or less, at least as well informed as the columnist.
Before a slightly tingling restlessness rises in the remote corners of your central nervous indignation center, which will soon break into the cry of "trivialization!", Let me say: Yes, I am a friend of animals and especially of cuddly beavers.
No, I do not support it when famous women in love, opera singers or pretzel bakers, with or without dimples, attack women in their professional or social environment.
I am a firm opponent of rolling over passers-by, albeit not of the off-road vehicle itself.
And I'm really excited about any violent crime that turns out to be a fantasy.
So for now there is really no reason to be indignant.
In any case, I am the messenger, and one should leave him alone, think myself and Mr. Julian Reichelt.
On the other hand, I suspect that the above, slightly distant-looking retellings have caused a certain amount of unrest in many of you: On the one hand, because you don't know what's coming and you trust the columnist with all sorts of things, on the other hand, because the descriptions have that familiar sound of Missing so-called »empathy«, which has become so important to news consumers in the 21st century.
We have talked about »empathy« quite often, and you know that this does not actually mean the tearful »pity« that nowadays skips in short five-minute leaps through the life of »social media«.
But rather the social ability to empathize with other perspectives and perspectives, be they sympathetic or not.
Perpetrators are perpetrators are perpetrators.
So they are neither mothers nor rose friends, neither engaged nor traumatized.
Their life style is often limited to "rolling over" others, being "young" or "man", a "clan member" or the like.
Actually, you have to make it clear to yourself that it is much more important for us as humans to be able to empathize with the perspectives of the wicked, the criminals, the malicious and the immoral.
For it is from them that the danger threatens (us), not from the loved ones, the harmless, the childlike, the inferior.
So whoever says of himself that he is completely unable to "put himself in the shoes of a criminal or bad person" gives himself a pathetic testimony.
Besides, it's not true at all.
The most enthusiastic victim empathics are imagining the worst things with particular passion.
The more they imagine the depravity, brutality or absurdity of the perpetrator characteristics and behavior, the deeper and purer their compassion for the alleged victim is.
The striking thing about it is less on the general, theoretical level: there, such mechanisms of "processing" and the regulation of feelings are quite well researched and familiar.
It is rather astonishing that on a practical level most people get along really well with the fact that they know almost nothing about an event which in the short term moved them violently!
After all, nobody can seriously claim that the reports cited at the beginning, as they were distributed in the press or on the Internet, resulted in a halfway accurate, realistic or complete picture.
The opposite is the case, and every halfway intelligent person knows it too.
Almost no one would be satisfied with such a pitifully bad description, if it was an event from their immediate social area or even their own life, or would claim that they now knew enough about the matter to spread about it for hours or days to get on the nerves of other people with unsolicited wisdom, how to evaluate the events and what they tell us about life in general.
Asked once on a trial basis:
How do you come to report the discovery of a beaver injured for unknown reasons nationwide?
Are not enough hedgehogs, deer, dogs, cats and wild boars run over?
Has commercial poaching been stopped in Germany?
What considerations might lead a police station to report that they are looking for an unknown person who, for unknown reasons, may have injured a beaver with a stick in an unknown location?
And why is the crime called "Beaver stabbed"?
Section 17 of the Animal Welfare Act makes injuring, torturing or killing vertebrates "for no good reason" a punishable offense.
Of course, as we know, we have extremely sensible reasons for killing 250 million chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, cows, sheep, goats and problem wolves each year, not to mention the vertebrates of the sea.
Therefore, the full extent of animal love is centered on the dachshund, ornamental fish and the black rhinoceros.
Nothing against decent behavior in film, radio and television!
And everything possible, as far as it makes sense, against abuse of addictions for sexual motives or even the forcing of sexual acts or their tolerance through violence, threats or exploitation of specific fear.
However, there is relatively little need, I think, to illustrate these principles again and again with 60-year-old stories from one's own life by pouring a little dirt on deceased people.
As we can see from the individual case, it no longer has any personal meaning, but only serves the general amusement of the people and the moral strengthening of the faithful.
I have to admit that the question of whether Mr. Kirk D. tried to kiss Ms. Senta B. seems just as important to me as the question of whether Elizabeth II might have tried to slap her daughter Anne 55 years ago .
I took note of what people's voice had to say about the two suspects from Frankfurter Elbestrasse, or to suspect, with great interest.
»SUV« and »young men« are absolutely sufficient to unleash a huge wave of xenophobic full-post »empathies«.
The alleged course of the event was presented in such a deficit and one-sided way that questions almost arose: What is the meaning of the term "pedestrian" or "passerby"?
Why is the victim "filming" two other people on Elbestrasse at night?
How can they "roll over" him (both of them ?!)?
Did he stand in front of a vehicle?
How can one imagine the necessary resolution (!) Of the two (?) Perpetrators?
How and when could a "joint crime plan" (Section 25 (2) StGB) for a murder (!) Have been drawn up?
And so on.
Nothing specific is not known!
Nevertheless, as far as I have read it, the anger of the people was largely unanimous: at least a life sentence, or let's say 15 years.
Plus lifelong driving license withdrawal.
And of course immediately ban all »SUVs«!
So extremely intelligent demands.
The suggestions to the German automotive industry in particular are convincing again and again, as is the good advice given to 40 percent of German car buyers, 50 percent of pensioners who drive a car and 90 percent of motor vehicle experts in their living rooms.
And finally, the happy occasion was prepared a little crookedly, I thought.
A teenager was missing.
That should happen.
The circumstances were unclear;
this is rarer, but not unique either.
The police said that a violent crime "cannot be ruled out".
This is expressed politically and diplomatically, but actually meaningless: What can be "excluded" in life?
"Witness, can you rule out with one hundred percent certainty that you are wrong?" Asks the extremely skilled lawyer at the main hearing.
When he is in a very combative mood, he adds: "Remember that you can be sworn in!" That is, with all due respect, a stupid move: Nobody can "rule out" anything with absolute certainty.
Why should you?
The answer "no" is by no means an admission that everything is not really known, but only the confirmation of a banality.
When everything is equally important, nothing is important anymore.
Press releases and even more unprofessional reports (Internet) are similarly meaningless and polemical: "Probably" is a paraphrase of "certain", "Perpetrator" is the common name of suspects.
Victims, whose role as innocent victims one wants to fix, are called "the disabled pensioner" or "the 60-year-old pedestrian";
it can also be "the dark-haired mother of three children" or "the passionate rose lover".
Perpetrators are perpetrators are perpetrators.
So they are neither mothers nor rose friends, neither engaged nor traumatized.
Their life style is often limited to "rolling over" others, being "young" or "man", a "clan member" or the like.
In other words: suspects are presented in their position as perpetrators in a specific situation, crime victims in their social role, which is obvious to the reader / viewer and invites identification.
Both are problematic;
but the combination of the two is quite wrong: it creates bias, excitement, contraction.
So the opposite of what would be required: distance, reflection, differentiation, demand.
Most readers and consumers know this. They know that not all SUV drivers are criminals, not all young men are violent criminals, not all actors are rapists, and not all suspects are liars.
Because they are not themselves either.
What is going on in the forums and chats, the level of anger, the lynch mood, the completely thoughtless, sometimes simply stupid prejudice, short-circuiting and carelessness, is a real phenomenon that you have to think about in general, from a mass psychological and sociological perspective , but also individually.
How do the individual people, who are by no means so stupid that they cannot orientate themselves in their own life and also recognize and rethink somewhat more complicated questions, to throw themselves like five-year-old children on alleged facts without hand and foot and with great? Excitement to publish your "opinion" about it?
The mere "unmasking" of such foreshortenings is all well and good.
But unfortunately it is always the others who are stupid or wrong.
For individuals, emotions are often very difficult to control, and the general mood, as we know, is constantly amplifying this.
This naturally gives rise to dangers that actually achieve the opposite of what is claimed: the alleged "empathy" for a hundred distant, vague facts or alleged fates cannot be realized, endured or implemented;
it remains a fleeting feeling and must immediately be replaced by the next excitement.
Therefore, with the hype of so-called empathy, mutual understanding does not grow, but strangeness and indifference in society.
The "victims" are becoming more and more interchangeable, because nobody can seriously believe in the "stories" that flash up in the spotlight over a long period of time.
At the same time, the standards and structures that allow and make it necessary to differentiate continue to disintegrate: In other words, to distinguish between the important and the unimportant, the heavy from the light, the dangerous from the everyday.
When everything is equally important, nothing is important anymore.
If everyone is completely unique and special, then there are no longer any special features, only competitors for attention.
more on the subject
Criminal Reports: The Worst Case, The Fastest OpinionA column by Thomas Fischer
All of this has, admittedly, been well known for a long time.
But you can repeat it once in a while in a column, because it is not wrong.
You cannot change it by simply wanting to or by thanking fate one more time for not being like the others.
Nevertheless, you can also work on yourself a little.
Before you go completely crazy and declare the absurd mass murder »crime scene« from last Sunday to be the film of the month or the mirror of German crime, you can just take a deep breath, remember your successful school leaving certificate and ask yourself: Can it do anything? really be?
Isn't there something that I don't know, don't know, can't judge?
Do I really have to be ashamed if the pure nonsense does not trigger strong feelings in me?
The answers to such questions can help you through many a thicket.
And the best of all pieces of advice, if you are not on duty in the fire brigade or with the attack team, is always: First, think carefully.
