Erich Wulff

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Erich Adalbert Wulff (born November 6, 1926 in Tallinn , Estonia , † January 31, 2010 in Paris ) was a German psychiatrist and professor of social psychiatry . He wrote some of his publications under the pseudonym Georg W. Alsheimer .

Life

Erich Wulff grew up as the son of a pulmonologist in Tallinn in what was then the Republic of Estonia, where he also attended grammar school. During the Nazi era , he and his family were relocated to Posen as a “ Baltic German ” in 1939 , where he went to the Hindenburg School. After completing the Reich Labor Service in 1943, Wulff was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1944 and participated in the war on the Eastern Front in 1944/45, was transferred to the home hospital in Lingen / Ems because of a lung disease and then came to the French hospital Tournai as a prisoner of war. In Lippstadt he was released from captivity.

He graduated from high school in Lippstadt in 1947 and studied medicine and philosophy at the University of Cologne from 1947 to 1953 , followed by a study visit to France. In Cologne he made friends with Karlheinz Stockhausen . After the state examination in 1953, he trained as a psychiatrist at the Universities of Marburg , with a scholarship in 1953/1954 at the Sorbonne, in 1956 as an assistant in a Bayreuth private clinic and in 1957 as a volunteer and assistant in Freiburg im Breisgau at the Psychiatric and Neurological University Clinic where he received his PhD in 1960. From 1961 to 1967 he was part of the team under Prof. Horst-Günther Krainick, teaching at the medical faculty of the University of Huế in Vietnam . Wulff's commitment to members of the South Vietnamese opposition led to a difficult situation, the project was on the verge of failure and Wulff was expelled. After a change of government he was able to return. At the end of 1967 the security situation worsened and Wulff was the first to leave. His colleagues and Krainick's wife were kidnapped and murdered by Vietnamese units a little later during the Tet offensive at the time of the occupation of Hues. German aid was then discontinued. At the same time as the kidnapping, Wulff took part in the Vietnam Congress in Berlin .

Under the pseudonym Georg W. Alsheimer , he reported on his experiences in a book that was highly regarded at the time. In Germany he was involved in the anti-imperialist Vietnam and peace movement . As the first psychiatrist in a leading position, he opened the doors of a closed department at the end of the 1960s, well before any psychiatric reform. Early on, he maintained contacts with Franco Basaglia and an international group of psychiatrists who believed that a reform of psychiatry was urgently needed.

From 1968 to 1974 he worked as a senior physician in the psychiatry clinic at the University Hospital Gießen , where he completed his habilitation in 1969 , and became professeur associé at the University of Paris VIII . In 1974 he was appointed to the newly created professorship for social psychiatry at the Hannover Medical School.

Wulff is one of the co-founders of the German psychiatry reform. His special areas of interest were ethnopsychiatry and structural analysis of madness , inspired by Georges Devereux . He was an editorial member of the Marxist magazine Das Argument and the magazine Sozialpsychiatrische Informations . In 1994 he retired . In 2003 he moved to Paris with his wife.

Publications

Monographs

  • Georg W. Alsheimer (pseudonym): Vietnamese apprenticeship years. Six years as a German doctor in Vietnam 1961-1967. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1968.
  • Psychiatry and class society. On the conceptual and social criticism of psychiatry and medicine. Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-7610-5813-6 .
  • Georg W. Alsheimer (pseudonym): A trip to Vietnam. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-518-37128-2 .
  • Psychological suffering and politics. Views of Psychiatry. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-593-32940-9 .
  • Insane logic. On the intelligibility of schizophrenic experience. Psychiatrie-Verlag, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-88414-193-7 .
  • Wanderings. Autobiography of a Psychiatrist. Psychiatrie-Verlag, Bonn 2001, ISBN 978-3-88414-301-8 .
  • The misfortune of the little poisoner and ten other stories from forensics. Psychiatrie-Verlag, Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-88414-390-5 .
  • Vietnamese Reconciliation: Diary of a trip in 2008 for the Buddha's and Ho Chi Minh's birthdays. Argument Verlag, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-88619-473-5

Essays

  • Basic questions of transcultural psychiatry. In: The argument . H. 50, 1969, pp. 227-247 ( online ); Reprinted in: Argument Studienhefte. H. 23, Berlin 1979.
  • The doctor and the money. In: The argument. H. 69 (1971), reprinted in: Argument Studienhefte. SH. 11, Berlin 1978.
  • Psychopathy? - sociopathy? In: The argument. H. 71 (1972), pp. 62-78 ( online ).
  • Psychiatry and Domination. Political use of psychiatry in West and East. In: The argument. H. 110, 1978, pp. 503-517 ( online ), H. 111, 1978, pp. 672-702 ( online ); Reprinted in: Argument Studienhefte. H. 34, Berlin 1979.

Editing

  • Ethnopsychiatry. Mental illness, a mirror of culture? Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Wiesbaden 1978, ISBN 978-3-400-00360-4

literature

  • Wolfgang Fritz Haug (Ed.): Foreign proximity. To reorient the psychosocial project. Festschrift for Erich Wulff (= argument special volume. Vol. 152). Argument, Berlin / Hamburg 1987.
  • Social psychiatry in transition. On the retirement of Erich Wulff (= social psychiatric information. Vol. 23, no. 4). Psychiatrie-Verlag, Bonn 1993
  • Wielant Machleidt: Erich Wulff as an ethno psychiatrist. In: Social Psychiatric Information. Vol. 37 (2007), no. 2, pp. 2-6 ( PDF ).
  • Andreas Mettenleiter : Testimonials, memories, diaries and letters from German-speaking doctors. Supplements and supplements III (I – Z). In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 22, 2003, pp. 269-305, here: pp. 302 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt , Viet Duc - German-Vietnamese Biographies as a Mirror of History, Bielefeld 2017, p. 93f
personal data
SURNAME Wulff, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alsheimer, Georg W. (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Tallinn
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 2010
Place of death Paris