RITES OF JANUS: The educated life and crimes of Dr. Hans Beutelspacher.

The history that follows will show that the limits of (in)humanity are malleable and readily shifted. Whirled in the chaos of life, ordinary people may suddenly be transformed into monsters, and later, may return calmly to their former nature. It remains unclear why these limits prove so diffuse. Dr. Hans Beutelspacher, whose life story took us ten years to reconstruct, traced this path in both directions, and thus came to embody yet another mystery of the human mind. The possessor of an educated and inventive intelligence, he toyed with monstrous behaviour during World War II, before returning just as effortlessly to his «human» and even benevolent state, later developing a prominent career in the field of soil biochemistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]