Wilhelm Weygandt

Wilhelm Christian Karl Jacob Weygandt ( born September 30, 1870 in Wiesbaden, † January 22, 1939 ) was a German psychiatrist and from 1908 to 1934 director of the Hamburg State Hospital Friedrich Berg. Since 1919 until his retirement in the spring of 1934 he was also Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Hamburg. His main focus was in the child and adolescent psychiatry, experimental psychology, forensic science, as well as the psycho-and eugenics. He was in the first third of the 20th century as the most important German authority in the field of research and care of the " juvenile imbecility ".

Life

Weygandt was born as the son of the merchant Wilhelm Weygandt and his wife Elise. After his graduation in 1889, he studied German literature, philosophy and theology at the University of Strasbourg. For the summer semester 1891 he moved to the study of philosophy, education and German literature at the University of Leipzig. In 1892 he began studying medicine.

1893 doctorate Weygandt with a dissertation on the "Origin of Dreams" in Wilhelm Wundt to the doctor of philosophy. At the same time he continued his medical studies in Freiburg, Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1896 he received his doctorate for " Histology of syphilis of the central nervous system " in Würzburg with Konrad Rieger. 1897 to 1899 he was assistant to Emil Kraepelin in Heidelberg and his habilitation in 1899 again at Rieger "On the mixed states of manic- depressive insanity ." The appointment as Associate Professor in 1904, followed in 1908 the appointment as director of the asylum Friedrich Berg. With reference to his work in Friedrich Berg Weygandt declined in 1912 and 1916 respectively professors of psychiatry in Greifswald and Rostock. During World War II, he taught at Friedrich Berg a a Department of mentally ill soldiers. In 1919 he was appointed Professor of Psychiatry at the newly founded University of Hamburg.

Politically Weygandt was a liberal and nationalistic. Still in 1918 he confirmed the Germans ' lack of self-confidence and pride völkischem "and rejected peace readiness as a weakness from. From 1919 to 1928 he was a member of the left-liberal German Democratic Party. He was also in a humanitarian box with national character to 1931 Masons.

Weygandt welcomed in 1933 to power of the National Socialists and applied on 15 May 1933, the membership of the NSDAP ( its inclusion was rejected ). In November 1933, he was one of the signatories of the commitment of the professors at German universities and colleges to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state. However, he was met with hostility from the Hamburg Medical leader Willy Wood man who accused him of lack of " national socialist instincts " and favored by Jews. Presumably, these accusations have contributed to the previously approved extension of the teaching Weygandts has been revoked. Also Weygandts trips abroad that belonged to his great passions were limited in the following years. Successor Wegandts as medical director in 1934 was provisionally Ernst Ritter House, which in turn was replaced in 1936 by Hans Bürger-Prinz.

Weygandt 1937 moved back to Wiesbaden. He suffered back stronger from asthma that had plagued him since his student days. He died on 22 February 1939.

Work

Weygandt was an exceptionally versatile researchers. Already with his philosophical dissertation, in which he, unlike Sigmund Freud advocated a strictly empirical approach, he was one of the major theorists of dream research of the late 19th century. In psychiatry, he worked on the border between neurology and psychiatry growth abnormalities, endocrine disorders, neurasthenia, aphasia, syphilis and " idiocy ". He wrote a series of textbooks for general psychiatry, diagnostic, forensic and child psychiatry. Overall, the number of his publications amounts to more than 600 Among these are literary works as a comedy in the Upper Bavarian dialect, three volumes of poetry and work on psychopathology in literature and art.

As director Weygandt modernized not only the fabric of the institution Friedrich Berg, but turned them with psychological, brain anatomy, serological and hereditary biological laboratories at the same time in a prestigious research institution. Famous were his collections of skulls and brains, as well as of art objects, drawings and sculptures of the mentally ill. He provided the hospital with all medical, surgical, curative education and vocational therapy options and turned one of the first in Germany malaria therapy after Julius Wagner -Jauregg to.

But Weygandt was also a vigorous proponent of eugenics. Since it was assumed that two-thirds of mental illnesses are caused by heredity, he already spoke in 1904 in favor of preventing the propagation consequently strained persons by marriage prohibitions or sterilizations. In 1913, he considered the " theoretical raison d'être " of the type of the " born criminal " and called several times recidivist criminals detinieren for life and sterilize " inferior" or castrating. In 1928 he claimed that Germany could only exist " as a land of quality work, but can include mentally to a maximum period of performance bred people whose psyche must be as free of inferiority of the system and harmful exogenous factors. " Simultaneously he doubted " [ o] b we will succeed, rational in Germany the weak sentimentality of unlimited regard for the individual well-being and general, superficial hedonism to sacrifice promoting racial reasons. " Weygandt feared doing a " degeneration "of society. Such he saw in modern art. The gathered from him, " art of the insane " served him here as proof that Expressionism, Futurism, Dada and the Bauhaus art are just as degenerate as the art of the mentally ill.

Accordingly, Weygandt welcomed not only eugenic legislation of National Socialism as the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring July 14, 1933, were made possible by the forced sterilizations. He advocated for a significant expansion of the sterilized group of people, in which he wanted to see included all auxiliary students, caring pupils and delinquent adolescents. He also advocated the castration and considered as early as 1933 the euthanasia " imbecile ". The work of Wilhelm Weygandts is thus a particularly striking example of how Biologism and eugenics in the first third of the 20th century and the growing psychiatric thought and action specific.

Publications

• Formation of dreams. Leipzig: Pressure v. brooding & batten summer, 1893.
• About the mixed states of manic- depressive insanity. A contribution to clinical psychiatry. München: Lehmann, 1899.
• The treatment idiotic and imbeciller children in medical and pedagogical relationship. Würzburg: A. Stuber, 1900.
• Atlas and essentials of psychiatry. München: Lehmann, 1902.
• The present state of the theory of cretinism. Halle a S.: Marhold, 1904.
• Slightly abnormal children. Hall A.Ş.: Marhold, 1905.
• Fairy tales. Play in 2 acts. Würzburg, [ca 1905 ]
• About idiocy. Unit reimbursed at the annual meeting of the German Association for Psychiatry, Dresden, April 28, 1905 Halle. Marhold, 1906.
• The abnormal characters in Ibsen. Wiesbaden: Bergmann, in 1907.
• Forensic Psychiatry. Leipzig: Goschen, 1908-1922.
• Abnormal characters in dramatic literature. Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen, Gerhart Hauptmann. Hamburg [ inter alia ]: Voss, 1910.
• Handbook of Psychiatry. Special Section, Dept. 2, H. 2: idiocy and imbecility. The group of defect states in childhood. , 1915.
• Psychiatric Expert in the wars. In: Annual courses for continuing medical education May 1917 p.22 - 79th
• About Psychology and Psychopathology of the belligerent nations ( After a lecture in late 1916 ). Leipzig: Voss, 1917.
• Recognition of mental disorders. ( Psychiatric diagnosis ). München: Lehmann, 1920.
• Friedrich Berg: State hospital and psychiatric university clinic in Hamburg. A contribution to hospital treatment and care of mentally ill and nervous sufferer. Hamburg: Meissner, 1922.
• Psychology and psychiatry. In: The tasks of psychology at German universities (1932 ), p.66 -68
• Talented imbeciles and their erbgesetzliche importance. In: Münchner Medizinische Wochenschrift, Vol 85, No. 1 and No. 2, 1938, p.12 -16, 61-64.
• Textbook of nervous and mental diseases. Hall A.Ş. 1935; 2 Neub. Ed in 1952.
• The youthful idiocy. Stuttgart: Enke, 1936.