A normally staid nation is spellbound by the daily media serving about a man who confesses he found a willing victim on an internet site - then killed and ate him
Germany just cannot seem to get its fill of a bizarre story of cannibalism, the internet and a victim willing to be eaten.
Ever since Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer expert, was arrested for killing and devouring another man last December, this normally staid country has been both horrified and fascinated by the gruesome deed.
For many Germans, the most disturbing and intriguing part of the incident is not so much the cannibalism, but rather that someone would actually volunteer to be eaten. And since Meiwes' trial began this month, the German media has served a daily portion of grisly detail.
'The idea was he would become part of me through my body,' Meiwes told a courtroom in the central city of Kassel on December 3. Speaking in a relaxed and conversational tone, he explained how he sought his meal in some of the darker recesses of the internet - a world of sadomasochistic websites, message boards and chat rooms focused on sexual perversion and cannibalism.
Meiwes found his victim, an engineer from Berlin named Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, after placing an online advertisement for a young man 'to slay and slaughter'. In March 2001, Brandes travelled to Meiwes' home in the small town of Rotenburg and subsequently agreed to have his body mutilated before being stabbed to death.