Man cuts off foot, throws it in furnace to avoid job assignment

[Alcibiades]

33. Here you go

Rather sad, really: it could happen here. Probably already has.

Spouse of "Krone": My Husband felt so worthless

"I'm sorry, but there was no other way out for me." So said the long-term unemployed man Hans-Peter U. (56) of the Austrian (town of) Mitterlabill, who early Monday amputated his left leg eleven centimeters above the ankle. He did it, according to the Styrian, because he feared a medical examination on the third of April that had been required by the job market service. "He wants to work, but can't get anything suitable," laments his wife Monika: "My husband felt so worthless."

On Monday afternoon Monika U. was allowed to visit her husband for the first time since his admission on Tuesday to the psychiatric department of the district hospital in Graz: "He apologized to me and said how sorry he was about it all. And he intentionally did it at a time when we - the son and I - were out of the house."

Teetotaler numbed himself with schnapps

The Styrian cut his left lower shank off with an electrical saw (picture) in the heating room and threw it in an oven (picture 2), in order to preclude the possibility that it might be reattached. Before he did the unthinkable, the 56 year-old, who shunned alcohol, numbed himself with schnapps and readied crutches so that he could schlep himself into the garage.

As Monika U. came home, a medivac helicopter stood in front of the house: "At first, I and my son Manuel had no idea what had happened. Only now do I know that my husband had great fear over this examination. Twice he wanted to collect a pension, and twice it was denied. He had it with the discs in his back and the shoulder. He wants to work. But the job he envisioned doesn't exist."


"Papa enjoyed working in the great outdoors"

"Papa was once responsible for a golf course," remembers Petra L. (34), a daughter who lives in Graz: "He enjoyed working in the great outdoors and was genuinely happy. He had several such jobs, but they were all short-term - for a duration of three to six months."

Unknown to his wife and daughter, Hans Peter U., who quietly celebrated his birthday on the 21st of March, had cabin fever. "'At my age, no one needs me,' he said, according to his wife, "that bothered him a lot. But he didn't talk about his troubles much. He repressed them until I think, something in him exploded."

"We'll manage this together"
Hans- Peter U. has been intermittently unemployed since 2003. He struggled with depression, and has been under psychological care several times, including eleven days in the Sigmund Freud Clinic in Graz. How it will go from her, no one knows. "The family stands behind him adamantly, no matter what," says Monika in her 36th year of marriage. "We'll manage this together."