Socialist patient collective

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The socialist patient collective was founded on February 12, 1970 in Heidelberg by 52 psychiatric patients under the direction of assistant doctor Wolfgang Huber and dissolved in July 1971. It saw itself as a therapy community and, in the spirit of antipsychiatry, wanted to "turn the disease into a weapon" aimed at a classless society .

Background and development

The basic thesis of the SPK assumed that all psychiatric illnesses are caused by society, which in its current form as capitalism is not itself healthy. Traditional medicine and classical psychiatry try to make patients “fit for the sick society” again. In contrast to this, the socialist patient collective demanded that the recovery of society must first be brought about before recovery would be possible in this society itself. In June 1970 Huber declared: “There must be no therapeutic act that has not previously been clearly and unambiguously identified as a revolutionary act” and concluded: “In the interests of the sick, there can only be an expedient or causal control of their illness, namely the abolition of the disease-causing private-sector patriarchal society. "

After it was founded in March 1970, the collective grew rapidly and, according to its own statements, had around 150 members in the summer of 1970. After Huber had already been released as a doctor, the university paid the group's rooms and Huber's salary after heated discussions. The public and legal disputes over the status of the group at Heidelberg University and its legitimacy continued. In the dispute about the continued existence of the SPK, a number of reports were obtained from the University of Heidelberg. The supporters of the patient collective included Horst-Eberhard Richter from Gießen, Peter Brückner from Hanover and Dieter Walk , the former head of the Heidelberg University Policlinic. Walter Ritter von Baeyer, the former head of the clinic of the doctor Huber, Hans-Joachim Bochnik from Frankfurt and Helmut Thomä from Ulm, a former employee of Alexander Mitscherlich at the Psychosomatic University Clinic in Heidelberg, were appointed as counter -assessors .

The SPK became radicalized when a member of the group committed suicide in April 1971. The SPK blamed its opponents for this, and repeatedly occupied institutions of the university management. In June 1971 the SPK came under suspicion of supporting actions by the Baader Meinhof group . Law enforcement officers searched the rooms and detained members, and a statement appeared: "If we are surrounded, we will escape." In July, forged papers, weapons and explosives were found; the investigators identified an "inner core" which they viewed as a criminal organization . In November 1972, after an exchange of fire with the police, there were trials against SPK members, including a. Huber lost his license as a doctor, and he and his wife were sentenced to several years imprisonment for “participating in a criminal organization, manufacturing explosives and forging documents”.

In July 1971 the SPK disbanded (self-portrayal: "strategic retreat"). In 1973, while still out of prison, Huber called for the establishment of a new patient front.

During this time, some SPK members switched to the RAF , including Klaus Jünschke , Margrit Schiller , Lutz Taufer , Bernhard Rössner , Hanna Krabbe and Siegfried Hausner , presumably Elisabeth von Dyck , Baptist Ralf Friedrich , Sieglinde Hofmann and presumably Friederike Krabbe . Taufer, Rössner, Hanna Krabbe and Hausner were involved in the hostage-taking in the German embassy in Stockholm in 1975, and in the series of attacks in autumn 1977 by Dyck, Friedrich, Hofmann, and possibly Friederike Krabbe.

SPK / PF (H)

From 1985, people from Huber's environment appeared as "Illness in the Law" . To this day, a website and the dispatch of documents and books of the SPK is operated under the name Patient Front / Socialist Patient Collective (H) - SPK / PF (H) Operators of the "Pathopraktik mit Juristen" ( legal notice ) describe themselves as identical to the SPK, which has never ceased to exist. They try to use insults and threats to proceed against representations of the history of the SPK that do not correspond to their self-image the SPK had nothing to do with the RAF, nothing to do with the 1968 movement and nothing to do with antipsychiatry.

documentary

The director Gerd Kroske sheds light on the topic in his documentary "SPK Complex" through interviews with those involved and material from archives . The film premiered at the 2018 Berlinale in the Forum series .

Criticism of the film was expressed by Mario Damolin, Ralf Forsbach , Helmut Kretz and Christian Pross , among others .

  • Damolin: The patient topic in the film evaporates in favor of a story about terrorism, the RAF, Stammheim and the Stockholm attack . The documentation remains a dramaturgical patchwork, in which almost everything is missing that could have made this topic exciting and interesting, such as the elaboration and interlinking of the individual and social dynamics that favor the emergence of sects of this kind.
  • Forsbach: “Source criticism is unknown. A partisan film tries to exonerate the convicted criminals of the socialist patient collective ... Gerd Kroske let himself be guided by witnesses who were ready to give evidence to him and ignored material that psychiatrists and historians could have contributed and have long since published ... The film failed, for research, however, it at least offers new contemporary witness statements. But even here a regret remains. The wrong questions were asked ” .
  • Kretz: “The film is a cleverly made, gimmicky falsification of the historical SPK complex, which comes along as a documentary film and knowingly and shamelessly dupes uninformed gullible people through false information ... The film is always vague. It evokes a mood that makes you sympathize with the concerns of the SPK and especially with Huber ... The film refuses to critically examine the truly destructive and self-destructive forces of the SPK, to which many patients, and in the environment especially the well-meaning people like the former Left-liberal rector Prof. Rendtorff , who had tried to find an understanding and solutions, fell victim ” .
  • Pross: The complex history of the SPK is declined in the film to a black and white painting, essential factors and actors are faded out and Huber is one-sidedly stylized as a victim of an allegedly reactionary hospital management. The fact that the clinic management under Walter von Baeyer was one of the most progressive in the Federal Republic and a workshop for the psychiatry reform was suppressed. As a self-declared “patient among patients”, Huber was guilty of numerous violations of boundaries . The perpetrators Huber and his deeply unethical practice would embezzled in the film. The director's dealings with contemporary witnesses are also questionable and selective. So he spreads about two former Heidelberg psychiatrist colleagues Huber in the press that they had "completely stupidly cheated out of an interview" because they had "a guilty conscience" about what they had done at the time. This violation of the basic rules of impartiality towards contemporary witnesses alone disqualifies the director as a researcher and documentary filmmaker.

Literature on the SPK (selection)

Contemporary representations
  • SPK - turn the disease into a weapon. An agitation by the socialist patient collective at Heidelberg University. With a foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre . Trikont Verlag: Trikont - Texte, Munich, 1972. ISBN 3-920385-47-0 .
  • AStA Heidelberg, Socialist Heidelberg Student Union (SHS): Documentation on the persecution of the socialist patient collective. Self-published, Heidelberg 1971 [Peter Hein: Urban guerrilla and armed struggle in the FRG and West Berlin. A bibliography , Edition ID archive in the International Institute for Social History (IISG) , Amsterdam 1989, p. 41].
  • Basisgruppe Medizin Gießen, Fachschaft Medizin Gießen (ed.): Documentation on the Socialist Patient Collective Heidelberg (The collected SPK leaflets, among others, reprinted in two contemporary volumes): Part 1, (February to October 1970), self-published, Gießen, 1971; Part 2, (October 1970- August 1971), self-published, Gießen, undated, (1972).
  • Socialist Patients' Collective at the University of Heidelberg (SPK): On the Dialectics of disease and revolution . In: Hans – Peter Gente (Ed.): Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Sexpol, Volume 2, Current Discussion , Fischer Tb 6072, Frankfurt am Main, 1972, pp. 311–341. According to the sources, based on a hectographed manuscript, Heidelberg, 1971.
  • Socialist Heidelberg student union (ed.): Guerrilla war against patients. Documentation on the pursuit of the SPK Heidelberg. Heidelberg [June] 1972. Revised edition. [Hein, p. 61].
  • Jürgen Roth: Psychiatry and practice of the socialist patient collective. In: Dossier: Patient Self-Organization and the State Apparatus. Kursbuch 28, July 1972, pp. 107-146, here pp. 107-120.
  • From the indictment against the socialist patient collective. In: Dossier: Patient Self-Organization etc. Kursbuch 28, July 1972, pp. 107–146, here pp. 140–146.
  • Rote Hilfe Frankfurt / Main: Employment ban for the sick. Documentation on the dismissal of the former member of the socialist patient collective at Heidelberg University from civil service. Self-published, Frankfurt am Main, undated [1972] [Peter Hein: Urban guerrilla and armed struggle in the FRG. Supplementary volume to the bibliography, Edition ID-Archiv, Berlin 1993, p. 17] (This is Werner Schork.)
Research literature
  • Cornelia Brink :
    • Radical psychiatry criticism in the Federal Republic. The socialist patient collective in Heidelberg. In: Franz-Werner Kersting (Hrsg.): Psychiatry reform as social reform. The mortgage of National Socialism and the departure of the sixties. Paderborn 2003, pp. 165-180.
    • Psychiatry and Politics. To the socialist patient collective in Heidelberg. In: Klaus Weinhauer , Jörg Requate, Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (ed.): Terrorism in the Federal Republic. Media, State and Subcultures in the 1970s. Frankfurt am Main 2006, pp. 134–153.
  • Christian Pross , Sonja Schweitzer and Julia Wagner: "We wanted to run to ruin". The history of the socialist patient collective Heidelberg. Psychiatrie Verlag, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3884146729 (summary in English (pdf) )

See also

Web links

Commons : Socialist patient  collective - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ H. Häfner. The socialist patient collective at the University of Heidelberg 1970-1971. In: Neurology 12/2018; 37: 901-909
  2. ^ Base group medicine Gießen and student body medicine Gießen (ed.): Documentation on the socialist patient collective Heidelberg. Giessen 1971
  3. ↑ a b “Make a weapon out of illness!” Where psychiatric patients should become revolutionaries - the socialist patient collective SPK (1970/71). Unsigned article from the Heidelberg student newspaper Ruprecht No. 35, May 16, 1995 (here on the website of the Math / Phys student body, last accessed September 2, 2018)
  4. ↑ http://www.spkpfh.de/
  5. ↑ Ralf Forsbach: The 68er and medicine. Health policy and patient behavior in the Federal Republic of Germany (1960–2010) , V&R unipress, Göttingen 2011 (= medicine and cultural studies. Bonn contributions to the history, anthropology and ethics of medicine, vol. 5), ISBN 9783899717600 . P. 100, online
  6. ↑ Berlinale 2018 program - SPK complex. Retrieved February 11, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Gerd Kroske on his documentary "SPK Complex." Deutschlandfunk April 14, 2018. Retrieved on December 5, 2018
  8. ^ Christiane Peitz. Make a weapon of illness. In: Der Tagesspiegel, April 20, 2018. Retrieved on December 5, 2018
  9. ↑ Mario Damolin. The documentary filmmaker as a fairytale uncle . In: Context: weekly newspaper, issue 368 (April 18, 2018) (digitized version)
  10. ↑ In: Psychiatrische Praxis 2019; 46: 106-109.
  11. ↑ In: Psychiatrische Praxis 2019; 46: 106-109.
  12. ^ Christian Pross. Missed chance to clear up a dramatic chapter in the history of psychiatry. The documentary "SPK Complex". In: Neurology 2018; 37: 826-831 (pdf)