Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Roller

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Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Roller (born January 11, 1802 in Pforzheim , † January 4, 1878 in Achern ) was a German psychiatrist . He was the founder and long-time director of the Illenau sanatorium and nursing home in Achern and belonged to the group of somatics .

Life

Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Roller was the second born of a total of seven children from the marriage of the doctor Johann Christian Roller and Auguste Wilhelmine Roller, née Finner. The firstborn sister died as a toddler, so that he grew up as the oldest with five siblings. From an early age, his life was shaped by the work of his father, who ran the madhouse in Pforzheim from 1804 until his death in 1814 . In 1814 he and his father fell ill with typhus . While his father died of the disease at the age of 40, he overcame it.

From 1818 to 1821 he studied medicine at the universities in Tübingen and Göttingen . After successfully completing his degree, he settled in Pforzheim as a doctor. In 1825 he traveled to various madhouses in Europe on behalf of the Grand Ducal Government to study the treatment and treatment of patients. In 1827 he became an assistant doctor in the Heidelberg madhouse and headed it from 1835 to 1842. Strongly influenced by his study trip and the poor conditions in Heidelberg, he worked together with the director Friedrich Groos for the construction of a larger and more modern institution, which was then run by Hans Voss was planned and built. In 1831, in his book “The Insane Asylum Represented in All Its Relationships”, he showed how such a structure should be designed in order to meet the demands of current knowledge and humanity.

In 1840 he married his cousin Christiane Roller. Together they had nine children, three of whom died at a young age.

His ideas became reality in 1842 when the Illenau sanatorium and nursing home was opened in Achern. He led this until his death in 1878.

Services

The great achievement of Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Roller was the consistent implementation of his idea of ​​a modern insane asylum. The establishment of the Illenau sanatorium and nursing home in the rural idyll of Ortenau followed his idea of ​​"isolating" the sick. But Roller's intention was not to ban the sick from society. His many years of experience had shown him that mental illnesses are often related to peculiarities of the familiar environment. He therefore saw chances of recovery in the separation from the familiar surroundings through accommodation in a "rural asylum".

Throughout his life he defended his idea vehemently against the representatives of the “Stadtasyls”, professors of the medical faculties of the universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg. This contrary opinion, and above all the fact that Roller had a large lobby with the state administration and the grand ducal court, had the consequence that appropriate institutions were only set up and systematically researched again at the universities after his death.

Fonts

  • The insane asylum shown after all its connections , Karlsruhe 1831.
  • Psychiatric issues of the time from the field of care for the insane in and outside the institutions and their relationship to state and social life, Berlin: G. Reimer 1874 [1] .

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hof- und Staats-Handbuch des Großherzogthums Baden in the Google book search
personal data
SURNAME Roller, Christian Friedrich Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1802
PLACE OF BIRTH Pforzheim
DATE OF DEATH January 4, 1878
Place of death Achern