Alfred Auersperg

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Weitwörth Castle

Alfred Auersperg (from 1899 to 1918 officially Alfred Johann Maria Anton Rupert Prince Auersperg ; born September 26, 1899 at Weitwörth Castle in Nussdorf am Haunsberg ; † September 10, 1968 in Hamburg ) was an Austrian psychiatrist .

Youth and life in Austria

Alfred Auersperg was born the youngest of six children. His father was the large landowner Dr. jur. Eduard Prince Auersperg, his mother was Maria Theresia Princess Auersperg, née Princess Schönburg-Hartenstein. From 1910 to 1917 he attended the humanistic prince-archbishop high school Borromäum in Salzburg . This he completed in 1917 with the war High School from. From May 1917 to November he was a soldier or non-commissioned officer . After returning from the war , he attended lectures on law and philosophy at the universities in Innsbruck and Vienna, and began an apprenticeship in banking, which he soon broke off.

His first marriage was on October 17, 1923 in Vienna with Martha Maria Hedwig Spiegelfeld, who was almost ten years older than him. The marriage remained childless. With his second wife, Ingeborg Auersperg (née von Hardt), he had three children, Andrea, Alfred and Johannes.

From 1924 Auersperg began to study medicine at the University of Vienna . While still a student he published his first neuropathological work in 1926 . In the last year of his studies Auersperg worked as a demonstrator at the Neurological Institute with Otto Marburg . Auersperg completed his medical studies at the University of Vienna in 1929. From 1930 to 1931 Auersperg worked as an assistant at the Wiener Städtische Nervenheilanstalt Döbling . In 1932 he went to Innsbruck to at Ernst Theodor bridge the electrophysiological learning methodology. From autumn 1933 to November 1934 Auersperg was a scientific assistant at the neurological department of the medical clinic in Heidelberg, headed by Viktor von Weizsäcker . Weizsäcker's new neurophysiological concept of the unity of perception and movement, summarized in the theory of the gestalt circle, was to shape all of Auersperg's later work.

In 1937 he became a lecturer in psychiatry in Vienna. On March 28, 1938, he was appointed acting head of the Neurological Institute at the University of Vienna. The former head of the institute, Otto Marburg, emigrated to the United States . When the final position was filled, Auersperg did not get a chance, but remained as an assistant at the neurological-psychiatric university clinic. In 1939 he was drafted into the military. In April 1940 he was entrusted with the management of the nervous department of the Air Force hospital in Vienna and the post-treatment station in Baden . In 1943 he was appointed adjunct professor . From 1940 to 1945 he was director of the Wiener Städtische Nervenheilanstalt Döbling, the so-called Maria-Theresien-Schlössel .

Von Auersperg was a NSDAP member (NSDAP membership number 6,196,737). He was also an SS member from April 1, 1938 , he was a member of the SS medical profession as SS Rottenführer . Eduard Pernkopf seems to have patronized Auersperg in the first years of National Socialism in Austria . He also applied for Auersperg to be appointed associate professor. Auersperg is considered a follower of National Socialism . So he stepped u. a. also as a lecturer at a training evening for the SS medical association “Donauland”. There is no evidence of participation in euthanasia measures, although as head of the clinic he may well have been involved in patient selections.

During the last years of the war Auersperg made contact with the psychoanalyst August Aichhorn . There is also a connection with the Vienna working group for depth psychology founded by Igor Caruso in 1950, which is said to go back to a discussion group led by Auersperg in the mental hospital Maria-Theresien-Schlössel.

Career after World War II

After the end of the war he was picked up by Soviet troops and interned , but then released again. He was dismissed from his employment with the Döbling Mental Hospital on June 6, 1945 because of his membership in National Socialist associations. The preliminary investigation initiated against him was discontinued in July 1945. His second wife, Ingeborg Auersperg, had already fled to Switzerland with their two-year-old daughter . From there she was able to contact her family in São Paulo . Her maternal grandfather emigrated there in the 19th century and she herself grew up alternately in Germany and Brazil. With the help of escape helpers, Alfred Auersperg was able to join his wife and daughter in Switzerland in 1946 and the couple decided to emigrate to São Paulo.

In Brazil, Auersperg first worked as a guest at the Vasconcelos Surgical Clinic with research on the psychophysiology of visceral and transmitted pain. In 1947 he went on a research stay at St. John's Riverside Hospital in New York City . In 1949 he was offered by the dean of the medical faculty in Concepcion ( Chile ) to set up a clinic and the chair of psychiatry. From 1949 to 1968 he was professor and director of the psychiatric clinic at the Universidad de Concepción . 1956 and 1957 followed research stays at the Child Study Center of Yale University , where he worked with the child psychologist Käthe Wolf, who had emigrated from Austria.

In 1983, 1986 and 1989 three symposia were held in Chile in his honor under the name of Alfred Auersperg , which dealt with his work.

Since 1953 Auersperg has stayed in Europe again and again, maintaining contact with Viktor von Weizsäcker , Walter Ritter von Baeyer , Herbert Plügge and Frederik Buytendijk , especially in Heidelberg . In 1958 he was granted a one-year research stay by the German Research Foundation, which he used to work with Herbert Plügge (Heidelberg) and Albrecht Deswort (Freiburg). In 1961, the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University applied for a guest professorship for several semesters in Comparative Psychiatry at the Indo-Asian Institute for him, but this could not be approved for financial reasons. From 1965 onwards, several conversations between Auersperg and Martin Heidegger on questions of perception are attested, as well as with Ludwig von Bertalanffy , the founder of systems theory .

literature

  • Eberhard Gabriel, Wolfgang Neugebauer (ed.): From forced sterilization to murder. On the history of Nazi euthanasia in Vienna. Part II. Böhlau, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-205-99325-X .
  • Martin Sack : From neuropathology to phenomenology: Alfred Prinz Auersperg and the history of the Heidelberg School. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-2379-X ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Viktor von Weizsaecker,

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Baptismal Register - TFBVI | Nussdorf am Haunsberg | Salzburg, rk. Diocese | Austria | Matricula Online. Retrieved October 24, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Martin Sack : From neuropathology to phenomenology: Alfred Prinz Auersperg and the history of the Heidelberg school. 2005, Königshausen & Neumann.
  3. ↑ Martin Sack: From neuropathology to phenomenology: Alfred Prinz Auersperg and the history of the Heidelberg school. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-2379-X , p. 12.
  4. ^ Entry on Brücke, Ernst Theodor von in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
  5. ↑ Paul Christian: The "Gestaltkreis" by Viktor von Weizsäcker . In: Viktor von Weizsäcker on his 100th birthday . Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg 1987, ISBN 978-3-540-16747-1 , pp. 72-79 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-642-95500-6_9 .
  6. ↑ Eberhard Gabriel and Wolfgang Neugebauer: From forced sterilization to murder. On the history of Nazi euthanasia in Vienna. Part II. 2002. Vienna: Böhlau.
  7. ↑ Herbert Plügge Plügge Rhein-Neckar-Wiki
personal data
SURNAME Auersperg, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Nussdorf am Haunsberg
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1968
Place of death Hamburg