ABSTRACT
The moment of death is usually considered to be a time propitious for a balanced overview of the deceased person’s life. At this moment he is no longer capable of changing the course of life, and this ‘frozen’ chain of events easily lends itself to a summary that attempts to give it a sense of coherence This is the impression that one gets from reading numerous funerary eulogies of politicians, in which their lives seem to have been organized around a single political principle from beginning to end.1 However, when one goes beyond these short narratives, to a thorough biographical investigation, one often finds a complex and even inner-contradictory life that cannot be reduced to a unique formula.
