To give death and to welcome death

“To give death and to welcome death” is the English rendering of “Den Tod geben und den Tod empfangen,” a phrase cited during a retrospective discussion of the killing of Sandro Beyer. The interviewee identifies it as a former Waffen SS motto and uses it to frame the deed in terms of reciprocal mortality: someone was killed by his hand, and one day he might occupy the victim’s place.

The Phrase in the Retrospective

The phrase appears in an answer given several years after the killing, following a broader reflection on its consequences. The interviewee says that those involved regret the terrible situation they brought upon their families, and describes the familial burden as something they could not come to terms with. He also stresses that the killing was unplanned, though he presents it as the ultima ratio in the disagreement with Sandro Beyer. In that context, the motto does not describe a premeditated plan; it gives retrospective language to the act and its irreversible consequence.

Mortality and Its Limits

The interviewee contrasts death’s social familiarity with its force for individuals: death and murder may seem mundane at a societal level, he says, but in personal experience they are archaic and consciousness-altering. He describes the deed as a crossing of boundaries into regions outside ordinary reality, after which a person becomes a stranger to the normal world. The cited phrase condenses this account into an image of exchange—not an assertion that the two deaths are equivalent, but a recognition that the person who dealt death is also mortal. The answer ends by invoking amor fati as a question, leaving unresolved what acceptance of fate could mean after an act that, in the interviewee’s own words, cannot be changed.