[Historical comments on ethics in psychiatry : Challenges in the 19th century].

With the emergence of an early psychiatry around 1800, a number of questions arose on dealing with a group of persons whose "alien", irritating and disruptive behavior was considered to be a phenomenon of being sick. In the context of the growing importance of human rights, the term humanitarianism attained a high relevance as the reference for early psychiatrists. Based on historical sources it is shown that despite a multitude of psychiatric beliefs on humanitarianism the established psychiatric practice was dominated by patriarchal order regimes up to the first decade of the twentieth century, later superimposed by the challenges of somatophysiological and experimental research as well as perceptions of biological racism.

[Historical aspects of ethics in psychiatry : From the end of humanitarianism up to the Human Rights Convention].

The establishment of academic psychiatry was completed around 1900. Simultaneously, in view of the societal crisis phenomenon the professional self-concept of the psychiatrist was shifted to a self-image, according to which psychiatry had to place its expertise at the service of the people and the country. This was particularly expressed in World War I in the brutal dealing with the so-called war neurotics.

["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].

German wine in an American bottle: the spread of modern psychiatry in China, 1898-1949.

Modern psychiatry was first introduced to mainland China around 1900 by Western missionaries. By 1949 the field had developed gradually as a result of contact with Western psychiatry and especially its American practitioners. This paper analyses the role played by key individuals and events in this process in the years prior to 1949.

[Madness and malaria--intersections and boundary blurring between psychiatry and tropical medicine in Hamburg].

The object of this article is to point out and to discuss the significant intersections and boundary blurring between psychiatry and tropical medicine while treating malaria in the German "colonial metropolis" Hamburg. The focus of this study is the Hamburg asylum at Friedrichsberg and the Institute for Maritime and Tropical Diseases (Hamburg Tropical Institute). Under analysis are two groups of patients as well as the means with which their doctors treated them: 1.

The reputation of psychiatry in the first half of the twentieth century.

The article evaluates the arguments used by German psychiatrists in the first half of the twentieth century to raise their professional reputation. The arguments, which were used in Wilhelmine Germany and in the 1920s, changed with the establishment of the NS-regime. While psychiatrists claimed for open care systems and for more transparency of psychiatric practice to the public in the first decades of the twentieth century, psychiatry became a crucial part of NS-health policies after 1933.

[Dis/arranged medical histories à la Friedrichsberg. Explorations of foreign patients by multilingual fellow patients in a German asylum about 1900].

This paper deals with two examples of a particular patient's activity at the Friedrichsberg Asylum in Hamburg in the beginning of the 20th century. Two multilingual patients assumed the function of interpreters in each case for a foreign fellow patient. They were involved to a great extent in the documentation of the medical histories.

[Psychological events--organic interpretations: concepts of trauma in German psychiatry since 1889].

This paper examines the debate on psychological trauma in German psychiatry since 1889. A content analysis of five leading German psychiatric journals between 1889 and 2005 is realised. An organic concept of psychological trauma has been prominent in the professional debate until today.

[Trauma and psychosis in german psychiatry - a historical analysis].

Objective: The paper reports an historical analysis of the debate on trauma and psychosis in German psychiatry.

Methods: Content analysis of five leading German psychiatric journals between 1889 and 2005.

Results: A substantial number of publications until the late 1960s addressed different aspects of potential links between trauma and subsequent psychosis.

["The communication is of course very difficult." The "insane re-migrants" from America in the Hamburg Asylum Friedrichsberg 1909].

Between 1900 and 1914 many so-called "insane re-migrants" were admitted to the Hamburg Asylum in Friedrichsberg. These patients were mainly East European emigrants who had left Europe via Hamburg and who had been classified as insane and sent back by the US-authorities. About 450 relevant medical files are available, exactly 100 for the year 1909.

["Querulousness", anti-psychiatry, and the public around 1900].

The querulent and the paranoid litigant as specific types of modern insanity partly owe their psychiatric genesis to an ambivalent legal-political development in 19th-century Germany. One the one hand the legal system had been opened up to the recognition of civil rights, on the other hand the extensive use of these new rights raised many problems. Open court proceedings and the daily press provided opportunities of information for the general public.

["Zerquälte Ergebnisse einer Dichterseele"--literary critiques on psychiatry around 1900].

In the last decade of the 19th century dozens of "mad" people from the respectable bourgoisie went public with most stigmatizing details of their private lives. The authors told about healthy people branded as insane, and incarcerated in insane asylums. They took their cases to the "court of public opinion".

[Psychological trauma in psychiatric textbooks published in german - the dominating view of psychiatrists between 1945 and 2002].

Aim: The study investigates the concepts of psychological trauma and their changes over time in psychiatric textbooks published in German between 1945 and 2002, assuming that textbooks reflect the established and dominating views of their time.

Method: [corrected] In psychiatric textbooks, the terminology, concepts of illness, and recommendations for assessment and treatment concerning psychological trauma were analysed.

Results: The concept of psychological trauma that had existed since 1916 continued to dominate textbooks up until the 1960s.

Psychological injury in the two World Wars: changing concepts and terms in German psychiatry.

This paper describes how German psychiatrists in two World Wars treated psychologically injured soldiers, and the concepts of related illnesses which they developed. The literature is reviewed, and symptomatolgy of patients and therapeutic practice in the wars are compared. By 1916 German psychiatrists had already established a concept of illness that continued to be used until World War II and beyond, albeit with a changing terminology.

["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.

[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.

[Trauma and Psyche in German Psychiatry since 1889].

Aim: This paper summarises the psychiatric concepts on trauma in Germany since 1889.

Method: Literature review and historical analysis.

Results: Based on the notion that traumatic experience may lead to mental disorders Oppenheim described the traumatic neurosis in 1889.