October 19, 1998

October 19, 1998, marks the end of J.’s life: he died that evening in the intensive care unit of Ochsenzoll General Hospital from a lung-heart illness, after being brought there for urgent psychiatric treatment four days earlier. The date brings together the deterioration of his health and the severity of his paranoid delusions in the final days of his life.

Final Hospitalization

On October 16, officers from the Pönitz police station brought J. to Ochsenzoll General Hospital. His treating psychiatrist regarded him as a severely disturbed man suffering from paranoid delusions, with an entrenched system of beliefs that could no longer be reached or influenced. Against the background of this active psychosis, the psychiatrist considered him potentially dangerous and in immediate need of inpatient treatment.

Death and Significance

J. died on the evening of October 19 in the hospital’s intensive care unit. The recorded cause was a lung-heart illness; the account does not attribute his death to the psychosis or to the circumstances of his transfer. The date therefore closes the sequence of urgent psychiatric concern with a death from physical disease, while leaving the paranoid delusions themselves unresolved.