Suicide by proxy was a novel crime that emerged in late sixteenth-century Germany: suicidal people committed capital crimes with the explicit goal of “earning” their executions, as a short-cut to their salvation. By dying repentantly at the hands of the government, perpetrators hoped to escape eternal damnation that befell direct suicides. To that end, they typically murdered a young child, as a religious sacrifice. Catholic perpetrators mutilated crucifixes and committed host desecration, all capital offenses. Suicide by proxy had a cross-confessional appeal and was a major societal problem in Europe between 1650 and 1800. Governments saw suicide by proxy as a major threat to public safety and a systemic threat to the criminal justice system but were unable to quash the practice until the early nineteenth century. 

Kathy Stuart is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. She researches the history of criminal justice, marginality and gender in early modern Germany. Her first book, Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge UP, 2000), received the biennial Hans Rosenberg Book Prize. Her second book, Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin and Salvation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) was awarded the Natalie Zemon Davis Book Prize in 2024. She collaborated with Austrian filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala on their feature film Des Teufel’s Bad (The Devil’s Bath), awarded a Silver Bear at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival. The film’s female protagonist is a composite of two historical women child murderers featured in Suicide by Proxy.

The lecture will take place at Vilnius University Faculty of History, auditorium no. 211 

Date: 7 September, 2026
Time: 17:00 / 5pm

The lecture is organized by our branch office in Vilnius.