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- Title
LJUDOŽEREC PRED POROTNIM SODIŠČEM. RAZVPITA ZADEVA BRATUŠA Z ZAČETKA 20. STOLETJA.
- Authors
STUDEN, Andrej
- Abstract
The paper deals with an outrageous example of cannibalism in Lower Styria in 1901. The winegrower Franc Bratuša admitted that he had strangled his daughter Ivana, and then with the help of his wife Marija dismembered her body and burnt it in a stove. He was supposed to cut off a piece of meat from the thigh, bake it and eat it. The court of assize sentenced him to death and his wife to three years of hard labour. In August 1901, the emperor pardoned Bratuša and the highest court sentenced him to life imprisonment. The criminal case experienced sensational turning-point in 1903. The thief who was identified as Bratuša's daughter was arrested in Novo mesto. The result was a true judicial scandal since it turned out that the spouses had been unjustly convicted of a murder after a fantastic confession of the ingestion of the daughter's meat. In addition, along with the miscarriage of justice, a judicial murder could also occur in 1901. Bratuša was then declared mentally normal by the experts, but in 1903 the experts specialists - psychiatrists declared him insane arguing that he was permanently mentally disturbed and that he had made it all up in his delusions, also due to reading books about cannibals. The Bratuša case therefore, in particular because of the alleged cannibalism, gave rise to a lively attention, and the Lower Styria Germans and Slovenians constantly exploited it in the context of inter-ethnic tensions for mutual charging.
- Subjects
CANNIBALS; TWENTIETH century; LIFE sentences; CRIMINAL courts; PSYCHIATRISTS
- Publication
Acta Histriae, 2016, Vol 24, Issue 2, p131
- ISSN
1318-0185
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.19233/AH.2016.5