Georg Bernhard Eschenburg

Georg Bernhard Eschenburg

Georg Bernhard Eschenburg, also Bernhard Georg Eschenburg (born January 19, 1811 in Lübeck ; † February 6, 1886 ibid) was a German physician and from 1838 to 1886 head of the then so-called insane asylum in Lübeck.

Life

Eschenburg was the younger son of the pastor at the Jakobikirche in Lübeck, Bernhard Eschenburg (1762–1832) and his second wife Maria Dorothea, née. Havemann, the daughter of the businessman Jost Hinrich Havemann. Johann Daniel Eschenburg was his older brother. He attended the Katharineum in Lübeck until Michaelis 1830. Among his high school graduates were William Henry Newman-Sherwood and Friedrich Christian Avé-Lallemant . He then studied human medicine at the Universities of Heidelberg and Göttingen . In Göttingen he was promoted to Dr. med. PhD. This was followed by a long study trip to foreign hospitals, especially in Paris , where he sat in with Jean-Étienne Esquirol . He returned to Lübeck, opened a practice, and in November 1838 was appointed by the council to succeed Carl Philipp Gütschow as the family doctor of the madhouse.

In his almost 50 years of management activity, he continued the reforms of the facility that Gütschow had begun and put it on the path to becoming a psychiatric hospital in the modern sense. First he removed chains and most of the window bars, had a bathroom installed and opened the garden to the patients. In the non-profit Society for the transport operation and issued Lübeckischen leaves , he published a series of reports and proposals to better support and integration of asylum. In 1857 he managed to collect a sum of money for a major renovation of the old house. In 1858 the Lübeck Senate took over the sponsorship of the institution, but it was only able to obtain regular subsidies from the city state towards the costs of administration at the beginning of the 1880s. At the same time as the renovation, a regulation was enacted that gave the family doctor a seat and vote in the board of directors, which was unusual at the time. The hospital's sick population, which in 1838 amounted to three men and 24 women, increased to 16 men and 31 women and by 1883 to more than 100 inmates. In 1860 and 1869, funds were approved for further structural improvements. In 1870 he succeeded in establishing an agricultural colony by purchasing the nearby Ruhleben homestead . The house on it was set up for 16 quiet sick people .

The institution underwent its last expansion between 1881 and 1882 with the construction of two two-storey high extensions, which offered space for around 50 patients classified as incurable. At the same time the prison garden was enlarged again.

On December 21, 1883, Eschenburg celebrated its 50th anniversary as a doctor. The Medical Association of Lübeck gave him the renewal of his doctorate and a congratulatory address by a deputation, to which his youngest son Dr. med. Theodor Eschenburg (1853–1921) was a member. Also Bernhard Eschenburg (philologist) (1843-1931) and Johann Georg Eschenburg (1844 to 1936) were his sons.

Works

• De partu facie praevia: Dissertatio inauguralis Medica. Berolini: typis Nietackianis 1833 (diss.).
• History of our insane asylum and report of its effectiveness over the past five years. Lübeck 1844.
• Our insane asylum and its needs. Lübeck 1854.

literature

• Oskar Wattenberg: Bernhard Georg Eschenburg, in: Theodor Kirchhoff (ed.): German insane doctors: individual images of their life and work. Volume 1, Berlin: Springer 1921, pp. 237-240.
• Karl-Heinz Reger, Horst Dilling: History of psychiatry in Lübeck: the 19th century. Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild 1984 ( publications on the history of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck, series B, vol. 11).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Genzken: The Abitur graduates of the Katharineum in Lübeck (grammar school and secondary school) from Easter 1807 to 1907. Borchers, Lübeck 1907. (Supplement to the school program 1907) urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 1-305545 , no. 270.