Benedikt Fontana (psychiatrist)

Benedikt Fontana (born February 7, 1926 in Cazis ; resident in Salouf ) is a Swiss psychiatrist .

Live and act

After seven years of primary school , Fontana attended the Bündner Kantonsschule , which he graduated from in 1948 with the Matura . He studied medicine , initially at the University of Freiburg , where he completed the pre-clinical part. He completed the clinical part of his studies at the University of Bern , with an interruption of a semester that he spent at the University of Zurich . In 1954 he passed the state examination in Bern. In January 1955 he became an assistant in the cantonal sanatorium Beverin in Cazis . In 1958 he worked for a year as an assistant in the internal medicine department of the Glarus Cantonal Hospital . He then worked at the cantonal sanatorium and nursing home in Münsingen , the psychiatric outpatient clinic in Bern and at the cantonal sanatorium Waldhaus in Chur . From 1962 he worked again at the cantonal sanatorium and nursing home in Münsingen. In 1967 Fontana did her doctorate under Hans Walther-Büel at the University of Bern with the thesis nomadism and sedentarism as psychological and psychopathological behavioral radicals: psychological genetic makeup or environmental impact . Fontana had already submitted the thesis to another doctoral supervisor at the University of Bern in 1958 and had failed with the doctorate at the time. Revised, he submitted the work again in 1967.

Thesis was the question of whether the " wanderlust " of Yenish is based on heredity or tradition. It is written in terms of social and racial hygiene . Large parts of the dissertation are copied from a diploma thesis by a social worker. The dissertation comes to the conclusion that the nomadic way of life is not purely hereditary, based on an attempt to “re-educate” people to settle down.

Mariella Mehr , whose clan was the subject of the thesis, is convinced that the dissertation had consequences years before its scientific recognition and provided a justification for the actions of the children on Landstrasse . The first version has already been used in psychiatric clinics.

Fontana was most recently a senior physician at the Münsingen Psychiatric Clinic . In April 1977 he was elected director of the Waldhaus cantonal psychiatric clinic in Chur , which he headed until 1991. His predecessors Josef Jörger , Johann Benedikt Jörger and Gottlob Pflugfelder were already intensively involved with Yeniche. Josef Jörger saw in Jenischen "an ominous legacy of moral and ethical nonsense founded by the ancestor, accumulated by the ancestors". This “disastrous inheritance” had to be “compensated” through imprisonment, early kidnapping, and preventing marriages between the Yeniche. Many Yeniche were interned at the Waldhaus Clinic under the four named directors. Under Fontana, the clinic continued Jörger's “psychiatric family stories” about Yeniche based on family trees that were updated and extended to other families.

In 2000 the biomedical S. Karger Verlag distanced itself from the “spirit” of the dissertation and regretted the consequences it had for Mehr's clan. After an expert opinion from January 1989, the University of Bern refused to withdraw Benedikt Fontana's doctorate.

Fonts

• About hormonal dampening of juvenile hypersexuality. In: Swiss Archive for Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry . 1964, p. 218.
• Nomadism and sedentarism as psychological and psychopathological behavioral radicals: psychological genetic makeup or environmental characteristics. A contribution to the question of psychopathy. In: Psychiatria clinica . Vol. 1. (1968), H. 6, pp. 340-366 (dissertation, University of Bern, July 27, 1967).
• Psychiatric treatments through the ages. Excerpt from the public lecture by B. Fontana, Waldhaus Psychiatric Clinic, on April 18, 1978. In: Bündner Hilfsverein für Nervenkranke: Annual report. 1977.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Benedikt Fontana: Nomadism and sedentarism as psychological and psychopathological behavioral radicals: psychological genetic makeup or environmental imprint. A contribution to the question of psychopathy. Inaugural dissertation to obtain a doctorate from the Medical Faculty of the University of Bern. "From the medical faculty at the request of Prof. Dr. H. Walther-Büel approved for printing as a dissertation, Bern, July 27, 1967, The Dean of the Medical Faculty: Prof. Dr. F. ESCHER . “ Reprint from the journal Psychiatria Clinica (Basel), Vol. 1, H. 6, pp. 340-366 (1968). Curriculum vitae on the last page of the reprint, after p. 366.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Willi Näf: "Sincere regret": Half-hearted rehabilitation of the writer Mariella Mehr. In: Southeastern Switzerland . November 28, 2000, accessed September 29, 2013.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Thomas Huonker : Offenses of genocide (violent removal of children from the group, targeted reduction in the birth rate in the group), the more recent academic and political discourse on the persecution of the Yeniche in Switzerland and under National Socialism as well as statements by Yeniche themselves these topics (PDF) . February 2011, p. 28.
4. ^ ^{A b} Thomas Huonker : Science and Yeniche in Switzerland. Brochure for the exhibition “The Travelers. The Yeniche between Vinschgau, Oberinntal, Graubünden, Swabia and Bavaria ». Landeck Castle , July 21 to September 19, 2001.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Fredi Lerch : The shadow of Rasmieh Hussein. ( Memento of the original from October 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Ders .: With both legs in the ground. Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 1995, pp. 79–91 (first published in: WOZ . 49/1988). 
6. ^ Sara Galle, Thomas Meier: Of people and files: The "Children of the Landstrasse" campaign by the Pro Juventute Foundation. Chronos, Zurich 2009, p. 88.