Portrait of the Cannibal as a Young Man
“But for those who knew this apparently normal man — friends and neighbours — the best clues may be found among the 43 rooms of the creaking old manor house where Meiwes carried out his crime. For here, amid broken toys, souvenirs and dusty photographs, is the history of Meiwes’s relationship with his mother, Waltraud, a history that cannot be separated from the chain of events that led to the eating of Herr Brandes… ‘He was a mother’s boy,’ neighbour Joerg Monkermoeller said. ‘She was his idol. He was always trying to win her approval — he spent most of his time looking after her…’ On 2 September, 1999, Waltraud Meiwes did die. She had suffered from cancer for some time and Meiwes had cared for her. She was 77, he was 37. From that moment, alone in the echoing old house, he began to turn his shocking fantasies into reality. At one point, he fashioned pieces of pork into the shape of a penis and ate it. There was, he admitted, an overwhelming desire to eat a person, to consume someone utterly. It was linked inextricably to increasingly strong homosexual tendencies…” — This Is London (UK)
In case you felt like you hadn’t had enough of the German cannibal case lately, you’ll be happy to know that the trial is back in session after adjourning for the holidays. As the trial resumes, no doubt there will be a steady stream of new articles about Armin Miewes and his victim, Bernd-Juergen Brandes. And this one, which profiles the past of Miewes and, to a lesser extent, Brandes, is one of the best to appear on the case yet. If you were wondering just how someone gets to be such a freak, this story might actually offer a little insight into the process.
Weirdly, Miewes’s life sounds as though it were modeled after Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho — complete with decaying family mansion, domineering mother, repressed homosexual tendencies. In fact, Miewes’s mother sounds even more domineering than the mother of the fictional Norman Bates. When other boys were wearing jeans to school, she made him wear lederhosen. As he grew up, he continued to live with her. He joined the army but lived at home. On a rare trip away, his mother went with him and shared a double room. On a date, she sat in the backseat of his car. When someone asked him why he didn’t marry, he said he wouldn’t until his mother died. Meanwhile, he was evolving his cannibal fantasies. He kept a dismembered Barbie doll locked in a safe so his mother wouldn’t find it.
However, if the story of Miewes is modern Gothic, that of Brandes remains inscrutable. Unlike Miewes, his mother died young. Like Miewes, he seems to have been sexually ambivalent. But that’s about all anybody seems to know, at least so far. In a previous entry, PervScan suggested that Brandes may really be the interesting one in this story, and so far it’s true: the cannibal was sick, but the victim who offered himself up — and willingly ate his own penis — seems beyond human comprehension, like a God only psychopathic.
Sorry to hear that The realist’s horoscope will stop.
I went into the diary and then onto this…
facinating page of realism.
Wouldn’t want to do without.
Hope it stays, or is rescued.
It’s worth it.
mls
does anybody know where you can view a video of this armin eatin dat geeza ???
interesting you mentioned Psycho, because there was a real inspiration for the character of Norman Bates: Eddie Gein. Ed’s story was the same as Armin’s: dependant on a domineering mother who died leaving him alone with nowhere to turn. Of course, Eddie didn’t eat pieces of his victims while they were still alive.
Armin Meiwes’ identity was damaged in childhood, well into adulthood, by the abusive control of his mother, Waltraud Meiwes. Divorced three times, and known to hate men, she is remembered for “berating him loudly and publicly.”
When young, Armin Meiwes was never allowed to separate and individuate from his mother’s identity to develop his own, as is normal. Consequently, his emotional maturity stunted at age 2 or 3. He looks like an adult, but only on the outside. Within, he is emotionally no further evolved than a toddler, with a child’s propensity for evading reality into narcissistic make-believe. Denied intimacy, and a stranger to empathy, he connects to others the only way his mother taught — by control. Eradicating another human being was here, perhaps, a powerless child playacting omnipotence.
Indeed, middle-aged Meiwes is described as “childlike.” His room contained Mickey Mouse comics. He obsessed about Grimm’s fairy tale, “Hansel and Gretel,” with its theme of cannibalism. Fused with his mother’s identity (an ambiguity symbolized by the bearded mannikin he placed on her bed after she passed away), he would act out the part of Grimm’s witch. But who was he eating to fill the void inside where his true identity should be? At some level, himself. Not coincidentally, he videotaped himself smeared with ketchup, pretending to be slaughtered. It seems that after the real Waltraud Meiwes’ death in 1999, the dependent son continued her nullification of him, but in 2001 with Bernd-Juergen Brandes as stand-in. At the same time, paradoxically, Armin Meiwes felt absorbing his victim’s identity was, in his words, “completing him.” Characteristically, while his victim bled, Meiwes watched a Disney film.
“The evil man is the child grown strong.” — Thomas Hobbes.
Don’t know where you got your info. all the articles i’ve read said that Armin read a star trek novel while Brandes died. not a disney movie.
Ed Gein. Ick. Is he the one who had necklaces made of lips and lampshades made of eyelids (or some other bit of skin…I know there was some sort of eyelid thing though, dammit!)
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