Die Robert‐Rössle‐Straße in Berlin‐Pankow. Zum Streit um die ehrende Erinnerung an einen „relativ belasteten“ Pathologen in der NS‐Zeit

For some years now, there has been a dispute in Berlin Pankow about renaming the “Robert‐Rössle‐Straße.” The pathologist is accused of an opportunistic attitude regarding his behaviour and his scientific work under National Socialism. In his research, especially that on a “pathology of the family,” Robert Rössle is said to have followed the racial‐hygienic paradigm of the Nazi era. He is to have used questionable methods and is subject to the reproach of having profited from his adaptation to the system scientifically and as a private citizen. The dispute over the naming of the street can be described as “dissonant memory,” impeding a harmonious culture of remembrance. It is suggested that this dispute – regardless of whether the street is renamed or not – be used productively in the sense of a reflexive historical consciousness to get on Rössle's track and illuminate the factual and personal entanglements of his network from different perspectives.

["Medicine is a social science" - the 200th birthday of Salomon Neumann]

Salomon Neumann (1819-1908) is one of the outstanding representatives of 19th century social medicine. As a medical reformer, statistician and city councilor, he made a significant contribution to improving social and hygienic conditions in Berlin. His most famous work was published in 1847 under the title "Die oeffentliche Gesundheitspflege und das Eigenthum" [Public Health and Property]. From 1859 to 1905, Neumann was active in the Berlin City Council for the improvement of the living conditions of the population. He was involved in the construction of municipal hospitals, supported the modernisation of sewage disposal, organised the Berlin censuses of 1861 and 1864 and was active in the field of health and social statistics. Not only was Neumann exposed to anti-Semitic reprisals during his lifetime, a foundation he founded to promote the science of Judaism was dissolved by the National Socialists in 1940. On the occasion of his 200th birthday, this article commemorates the life and work of the democratically minded and socially committed doctor and health politician. Salomon Neumann has rendered great services to social medicine in Germany.

["Euthanasia"--victims and test subjects. The fate of diseased, disabled children in Berlin during World War II]

This article shows, through a study of the Berlin-Brandenburg region, that children and juveniles who were subjected to the killings of diseased and disabled, or mentally retarded, persons during the Third Reich did not only fall victim to the operations of the "Reichsausschuss" ("Reich Commission for Registration of Severe Disorders in Childhood"). Many were also included in the gas chamber killings of the "T4"-action and in various decentralized killing actions. Furthermore, the co-operation of various medical disciplines in the misuse of children for scientific research is demonstrated by looking into the research on a tuberculosis vaccine. It can be shown that the purpose of the killings was not the painless ending of individual suffering, but that they constituted a means of freeing the public from so-called "ballast existences", whose lives were only prolonged if they could be of scientific use.

[Housing and work as criteria of the "Social Integration" of the mentally ill - development in Germany between 1900 and 2000]

AIM

This paper analyses, in what way psychiatrists considered housing and work as criteria of social integration of mentally ill people and what models of care were suggested in Germany throughout the 20th century.

METHOD

Publications in 29 German professional and scientific psychiatric journals through the complete period from 1900 to 2000 and monographs were searched for papers on the above issues.

RESULTS

Until the second half of the century, integrative initiatives related to housing and work generated in asylums without the aim of a full social integration of the patients. In the activistic concept of NS-psychiatry, work became an obligation for patients and a criterion for selection that decided on life and death. Not until the late 1950s, there again was an orientation towards integration in psychiatric care in both German states. Whilst already in 1963 the "Rodewisch Theses" outlined recommendations for the rehabilitation of the mentally ill already in the GDR (East Germany), a similar mark of reform ideas was published in the "enquete" in the FRG (West Germany) in 1975. In the GDR initiatives were limited to a small number of locations. In the FRG and the re-unified Germany various forms of sheltered housing and work were established - also with significant regional variation. However, a clear discussion of underlying aims and implications for the structure of mental health care was not found in the psychiatric literature.

CONCLUSIONS

In the 20th century a tradition of psychiatric ideas related to housing and work did not develop in Germany. Particularly, there were only sporadic contributions from university psychiatry. Work was more frequently explicit subject of discussions than housing. Both areas were - slowly and in discontinuity - established as criteria of integration of people with mental illnesses, which was increasingly accepted as an aim of mental health care.

[Discussion of medically supervised family care in Germany. Historical development of a policy for social integration of psychiatric patients]

This article is based on the thesis that family care in the 20th century was practiced mainly under pragmatical/economical and therapeutical aspects. Depending on time and place, one of the two aspects would dominate while the other would serve as supporting motive. The subject of this article is to examine selected models of family care in Germany at different times as to their aim regarding the social integration of psychiatric patients. The family care patients not only lived outside the psychiatric hospitals, but were usually employed in household, farming or trade of the foster home. So the integrative potential of family care was, and still is, aimed at establishing a living and working condition as "normal" as possible. Until 1945, patients who could not or were not allowed to return to a completely independent lifestyle, family care offered them the widest range of integration and freedom. The often observed long lasting stays in families, reflect this rise in quality of life, although many were formally still associated with the mental institution. Up to the fifties, family care can be evaluated as an attempt of psychiatric hospitals to encounter the social isolation of the mentally ill. Nowadays family care is seeing a certain renaissance as part of social psychiatry. It is however not always clear whether family care can serve as a mean of real integration in the sense of a completely independent living and working condition, or whether it leads only to an, even if permanent, extramural accommodation of the chronically ill patients.

[Chronic alcoholism between the wars. The "Alcohol Sanatorium" for men in the "Wittenauer Heilstatten" (Berlin) 1928 to 1934]

During the twenties of this century addicted patients were increasingly admitted to the "Wittenauer Heilstatten". The largest group were men with the diagnosis "chronic alcoholism". In this paper we describe the care and treatment of these patients, with an emphasis on new approaches for treatment of chronic alcoholism. In the course of World War I and its aftermath, the number of alcoholics admitted to hospitals had considrably decreased, which was partly due to alcohol shortage. However, during the twenties numbers rose close to pre-war level. In the beginning of 1928, a special ward called "Alcohol Sanatorium" with a capacity of 60 beds was opened in the "Wittenauer Heilstatten". This sanatorium was part of a broad welfare system. In the first place, the publicly financed alcohol care and information centers played a decisive role for the care for an alcoholic. Next in line were the clinics for the cure of alcoholics, predominantly under private or non-profit maintenance. Finally, municipal psychiatric hospitals like the "Wittenauer Heilstatten" and the wards for alcoholics in the workhouses or the workhouses themselves were part of the system. In spite of all the shortcomings due to "Zeitgeist" and prevailing circumstances, the therapeutic approach during the 1920's was progressive in the respects of treating "alcoholics" as patients. After 1933 this approach changes to judging addicted persons primarily as socially and biologically inferior which finally led to the exploitation of their capacity for work or compulsary sterilization. Due to this change, the number of admissions to the Wittenau "Alcohol Sanatorium" at last lost its special character as a ward within the clinical formation of the "Wittenauer Heilstatten".

[Open care--the Rodewisch theses--psychiatry enquete: 3 reform approaches compared]

AIM

The three most important German approaches for reforming psychiatric care in the 20th century--i.e. "open care" in the Weimer Republic in the 20ies, the "Rodewisch Theses" published in the GDR 1963, and the "Psychiatry-Enquete" in the Federal Republic in 1975--were compared using seven criteria.

METHODS

Psychiatric and general medical journals were systematically searched for articles on aims and objectives of mental health care.

RESULTS

All three approaches promoted stronger community based care. None of them suggested an "empowerment" as it is understood today. Differences between them concerned equal care for mentally and physically ill patients, international relations, and economic arguments. Comparisons on other criteria, e.g. the relationship with university psychiatry, yield a less clear picture.

CONCLUSIONS

All three ideas for reforms have been successful--to a limited and different extent. They resemble each other in essential principles, but there are also substantial differences.

Coping with quantity and quality: computer-based research on case records from the "Wittenauer Heilstatten" in Berlin (1919-1960)

Computer-aided research on hospital records has been used increasingly by historians in recent decades. We reviewed a representative sample of four thousand patient records from the "Wittenauer Heilstatten" (known as "Karl-Bonhoeffer-Nervenklinik" since 1965) over the period 1919-1960. Special focus was placed on the daily lives of patients, and we attempted to trace continuity and discontinuity through three differeent political systems. This paper outlines our research methodology by describing the structure of data entries, the use of special computer software and problems encountered with historical sources. It outlines the medical and social information which was obtainable and concludes by discussing the use of additional historical sources, necessitated by the limitations of case records.