THE CARNIVOROUS ROMANTIC: ARMIN MEIWES

Article BY Keimi Yamagata - Art by NICOLAS CASTELAUX

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Fellow German and social psychologist, Erich Fromm said that, “Erotic love begins with separateness, and ends in oneness” and if one is to believe this, there is no greater case of erotic love than Armin Meiwes and Bernd Jürgen Brandes. Perhaps the most well known vorarephiliac, Armin Meiwes of Germany began his journey to unwanted notoriety with a personal ad on a website called “The Cannibal Café” stating he was “looking for a well-built 18 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and then consumed” and eventually got just that…along with life imprisonment.

Armin Meiwes was born December 1, 1961 to a domineering mother in Essen, Germany. The fantasies had started young within Meiwes, but due to his mother, his desires were squelched until her death in 1999 at the age of 77. Meiwes, eerily reminiscent of Hitchcock classic Psycho’s Norman Bates, would dress as his mother, imitate her voice, and went so far as to put a mannequin head on the bed in her room that he sealed up not changing a thing. The rest of the house though was about to undergo serious renovation.

The house contained 44 rooms and looked as though it had been abandoned from the poor condition of it. Meiwes would then start to build accommodations throughout the house for the fantasy he hoped would soon be a reality.  In an upstairs room without windows, Meiwes created what he called the “slaughter room”. From the ceiling hung a meat hook and in the corner against the moldy walls sat a cage he constructed himself for holding victims.

With the house as he wanted it, Meiwes set out to find a willing mate to share it with, which was no easy task. Having a true case of vorarephilia, part of the allure of eating another was for it be consensual, so when the first response came in for his ad, Meiwes was overjoyed. An Italian simply known as Matteo was one of the first, but, which would prove to be a pattern, it wound up not happening. When asked why Matteo and he hadn’t gone through with the act in court, Meiwes said, “Matteo wanted me to burn his testicles with a flame thrower. And he wanted me to hammer his body down with nails and pins while he was whipped to death. I found that a bit weird.”

The discouraging and failed attempts would continue for Meiwes. From a neighboring town called Resgensberg, Andreas would contact Meiwes requesting him “to pick him up in a cattle truck and slaughter him like a pig.” But this seemed too laborious and risky to Meiwes and he told Andreas to take the train and they would meet at the station. Andreas finally gave in and once meeting at the train station, Meiwes eagerly brought Andreas home to show him the slaughter room. Upon Andreas’s request, Meiwes wore rubber boots for him to lick. So close yet so far, Meiwes thought this would be the day for his lifelong dreams to come to fruition, but as he wrapped Andreas in plastic wrap, Andreas called it off. Disappointed, but making the most it, Meiwes said “we just fooled around, drank beer and ate pizza” for the rest of the evening.

The next potential dinner guest was Dirk Moeller who traveled all the way from London with yet another specific request of Meiwes. On the experience with Moeller, Meiwes said, “He wanted me to pronounce a death sentence upon him like in a court so I got one made up from a document on the internet. He came to the house but he backed out, too. We ended up going to the pictures to watch Ocean's Eleven.”

Alex, from the same town of Essen, proved to be just as disappointing when Meiwes got a photograph of him and deemed Alex “too fat.” Getting farther than ever before with a lunch mate, Stefan from Kassel got as far as being hung from the meat hook from the plastic wrap he was bound in and Meiwes labeling the hanging body with papers of the types of cuts he would perform like bacon, steak, and ham, but was forced to stop when both men agreed it was just “so damn cold in there” as Meiwes would later say.

As any cannibalistic vorarephiliac would at this time, Armin Meiwes was highly disheartened and worried his desires would never be fulfilled until one fateful Valentine’s Day in 2001. Bernd Jürgen Brandes, a fellow computer technician, was known in town for his fondness of prostitutes and S&M fantasies. Upon finding the ad Meiwes had posted, the 43 year old knew he’d found the man of his dreams and their following excursion would become fodder for the nightmares of the entire country.

This is an email exchange released after Meiwes’s imprisonment from before their fatal meeting.

Brandes: "What will you do with my brain?"

Meiwes: "I'll leave it, I don't want to split your skull."

Brandes: "Better bury it, preferably in a cemetery; nobody notices skulls there. Or maybe pulverise it?"

Meiwes: "We have a nice small cemetery here."

Brandes: "You could use it as an ashtray."

Brandes could have been said to be more excited than Meiwes from the flirtatious banter he’d sent Meiwes’s way, which was only reciprocated.

Brandes: "Are you a smoker?"

Meiwes: "Yes, but my teeth are still pretty white."

Brandes: "That's good, I smoke, too. I hope you like smoked meat."

Meiwes: "Just bring yourself for breakfast."

Meeting almost a month later on March 9, 2001, Meiwes and Brandes would finally fulfill the dark wants they’d had their entire lives. Upon welcoming Brandes into his home, Meiwes showed him the slaughter room and the two discussed the details. Worrying Brandes would be in too much pain, Meiwes gave him between 20 to 30 sleeping pills and a bottle of Vicks cold relief to be washed down with a bottle of schnapps. Videotaping the entire event, Meiwes began by cutting off Brandes’s penis after a failed attempt to bite it off, a request from Brandes himself. The two had hoped to share in partaking of the meat together, but Brandes complained it was too “chewy.” Meiwes then cooked the penis with garlic, salt, and pepper in a pan, but Brandes was too weak to eat it and was loosing blood fast, so Meiwes ran a warm bath, helped Brandes into it, and sat waiting for him to bleed to death. This process took about three hours; all the while Meiwes read a Star Trek book to pass the time. Once Brandes was dead, Meiwes took him to the slaughter room, hung him upside down, kissed him once, and then stabbed him in the throat.  Meiwes then cut 65lbs from Brandes, portioned the chunks into plastic bags, and stored the pieces under pizza boxes in his freezer. He then buried the unusable pieces and teeth in the garden. For the next 10 months, Meiwes says he ate a bit each day and even attempted to grind Brandes’s bones into flour, but was unsuccessful.

All seemed to be going well for Meiwes until the police received a phone call from a man in 2002 stating he’d found detailed reports of cannibalistic killings from Meiwes on the internet. When the police raided Meiwes’s large home, they found the 15lbs of left-over meat from Brandes, the videotape, and his slaughter room. Meiwes was arrested and underwent a tumultuous trial and then re-trial. Since cannibalism wasn’t illegal anywhere on the books in Germany and Brandes had been a consenting victim, Meiwes only received a sentence of 8 ½ years for manslaughter until April of 2005 when his sentence was appealed in hopes from prosecutors of getting a murder conviction. The courts got their wish when on May 10, 2006, Meiwes received a life sentence after many a damaging testimony. Prosecutors said Brandes had not been fit at the moment to make such a decision and that Meiwes had only killed to satisfy himself not caring of the victim, which Meiwes emotionally protested in his testimony. Also, a psychologist said Meiwes was still dangerous and harbored the cannibalistic fantasies that got him there.

Since being in jail Meiwes has had many a change of heart. Meiwes says he feels sorrow and regret over his actions and hopes by writing a book he can stop any other vorarephiliac about to act on their urges. Meiwes says, “They should go for treatment, so it doesn't escalate like it did with me.” Meiwes also has become active in a prison based Green Party political group and has become a vegetarian.

Meiwes has developed a following and fascination outside of jail. Many musicians have been inspired by Meiwes and wrote numerous songs about his life including “Mein Teil” by German group Rammstein, “The Wüstenfeld Man Eater” by American band Macabre, and "Eaten" by Swedish metal band Bloodbath. The ever controversial and popular Marilyn Manson says he titled his newest album, “Eat Me, Drink Me” after the relationship between Armin Meiwes and Bernd Jürgen Brandes. “Although I can't relate to the relationship those two had, I found the story very compelling in a romantic way. I think a lot of people wouldn’t look at it as romantic, but it was to them in some sick way, and it is to me in some sick way, too.”

It’s not only the music world that has been moved by Meiwes, but also the cinematic one. A film called “Butterfly: A Grimm Love Story”, starring Keri Russell and Thomas Kretschmann in the role based on Meiwes, was released in 2006. The film was banned in Germany, however, when Meiwes’s said his “personality rights” were infringed upon. But despite his own lack of support for a film inspired by him, the film went on to be a favorite at the Festival de Cine de Sitges in Spain taking home the awards for Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Cinematography.

In the end, to be truthful, all forms of love involve a level of cannibalistic behaviors, metaphoric in most cases, but still present. The giving up of a disapproving family to stay with the one you are adamant you love. The quitting of your career to be the one to care for the child you both agree to have.  The confidence she once had devoured by the other woman who her husband has been seeing on the side for years. Love, by nature, is an anomaly requiring the laying down of certain parts of yourself to your partner and by this rationale, the crime Armin Meiwes and Bernd Jürgen Brandes are guilty of is giving up more than a family, career, or emotional stability, and in that respect, their love was deeper than most.