Karl Birnbaum (physician)

Karl Birnbaum (born August 20, 1878 in Schweidnitz / Lower Silesia , today Świdnica , Poland ; † March 31, 1950 in Philadelphia , USA ) was a German psychiatrist and neurologist .

Life

Birnbaum received his doctorate in Freiburg in 1902 and then worked at the city “ lunatic asylum ” Herzberge in Berlin-Lichtenberg (today Ev. Hospital Queen Elisabeth Herzberge). In 1923 he was able to complete his habilitation with Karl Bonhoeffer at the Charité of the University of Berlin , where he taught as an associate professor from 1927 .

In 1930 he became the medical director of the Buch sanatorium and nursing home . As a Jew, however, he was released in 1933 after the National Socialists came to power and was given early retirement as a professor at the Berlin University. Birnbaum also represented racist ideas in his work. Birnbaum shows that good or remarkable work, such as B. the psychological healing methods (1927), can go hand in hand with a racial hygiene point of view, with racial hygiene being a major topic worldwide in the 1920s.

In 1939 he emigrated to the USA and was able to teach as a lecturer at the New School for Social Research in New York, NY. Since 1940 he has been a municipal employee of the Philadelphia Medical Department , Penn.

Birnbaum conducted research in the fields of clinical psychiatry , psychopathology, sexual psychology, criminal psychology and psychopathology, and cultural psychopathology .

Fonts

About psychopathic personalities. A psychopathological study. In: L. Loewenfeld (Ed.): Borderline questions of the nervous and mental life. Issue 64. CF Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1909.
The pathological weakness of will and its manifestations. A psychopathological study for doctors, educators and educated laypeople. (= Borderline questions of the nervous and mental life. Volume 79). Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1911.
The psychopathic criminals. The boundary states between mental health and illness in their relationship with crime and the penal system. Langenscheidt, Berlin 1914. (from 1926 Thieme, Leipzig)
Psychological causation of mental disorders and the psychologically conditioned abnormal soul processes . JF Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1918.
Psychopathological documents. Self-confessions and third-party testimonials from the spiritual borderland. Springer, Berlin 1920.
Criminal Psychopathology. Systematic presentation. Springer, Berlin 1921.
The structure of psychosis. Basics of psychiatric structural analysis. Springer, Berlin 1923.
History of Psychiatric Science. In: Oswald Bumke (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Geisteskrankheiten. 11 volumes. Berlin 1928-1932, Volume 1, pp. 11-49.
Basics of cultural psychopathology. (= Borderline questions of the nervous and mental life. Volume 116). JF Bergmann, Munich 1924.
as editor: The psychic healing methods. For medical studies and practice. Thieme, Leipzig 1927.
as publisher: Concise dictionary of medical psychology. Thieme, Leipzig 1930.
Criminal psychopathology and psychobiological crime studies . 2., essential exp. u. verb. Edition. J. Springer, Berlin 1931.
The world of the insane . Springer, Berlin 1935.

literature

Birnbaum, Karl. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 3: Birk – Braun. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-598-22683-7 , pp. 19-22.
Walther Killy, Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.): German biographical encyclopedia. Volume 1, Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1995, p. 540.
Richard F. Wetzell: Inventing the Criminal. A History of German Criminology, 1880-1945 . Chapel Hill, London 2000, pp. 149-153.
Reichs Handbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft - The handbook of personalities in words and pictures . First volume, Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, ISBN 3-598-30664-4

Web links

Literature by and about Karl Birnbaum in the catalog of the German National Library
Julian Schwarz: Birnbaum, Karl , In: Biographisches Archiv der Psychiatrie (BIAPSY), 2015

Remarks

^ Karl Birnbaum: Criminal psychopathology and psychobiological crime studies. Springer, Berlin 1931, p. 190: “ Racial hygiene and criminal policy . Growing so through this vicious circle, the degeneration problem from the pathological side to a core problem of scientific criminology, so therefore will go hand in hand, the degeneration of fighting at the same time to a central problem of practical crime prevention . Individual, social and racial hygiene, with its fight against alcohol and sexually transmitted diseases, its prohibitive precautions against the reproduction of inferior people and its other eugenic measures, now comes into close contact with criminal pathology. In particular, the sterilization of criminally inclined psychopaths comes to the fore here as a measure that fulfills both racial hygiene and crime prophylactic purposes and therefore urgently requires - clearly regulated by law - to be included in the control system against all biologically and socially inferior [FN2]. Incidentally, starting from the signs of degeneration themselves, a socially significant and racially beneficial biological purification process comes to the rescue of all social and racial hygiene: Everywhere a kind of self-elimination and self-selection of degeneratives from social life and, in a broader sense, from life in general asserts itself, as it is due to the manifold self-harm symptoms in degenerate people: their increased morbidity and mortality, their strong suicidal tendency, their low tendency to marry and reproduce, further due to the reduced vitality of their generally small number of children and finally also due to their long-term detentions in penal and insane asylums, etc. is given -. "

↑ A comparison of the 1st edition in 1921 with the 2nd edition in 1931 shows that the topic of racial hygiene does not have its own section and is not listed in the subject index . On the other hand, the subject of “socio-psychological inferiority forms” is dealt with in detail in the first edition. You can find a comparison here: http://www.sgipt.org/forpsy/KrimTheo.htm#Vergleich%20mit%20der%20ersten%20Auflage%201921

^ Karl Birnbaum: Sexual psychological aberrations. In: Psychopathological documents 1920, pp. 194-210.

↑ contents of this first German Psychotherapy - Compendium : General introduction of Birnbaum himself, The suggestive therapy of Ernst Jolowicz , hypnosis and hypnotherapy by Gustav Richard Heyer , psychoanalysis and related methods of Hans von Hattingberg , the individual psychological treatment of Erwin Wexberg and psychagogics or psychotherapeutic theory of education of Arthur Kronfeld

↑ The first - in explicit opposition to the physiologically founded "Medical Psychology" by Rudolf Hermann Lotze from 1852 - decidedly psychologically founded textbook of its kind, decades before the establishment of the first chairs for medical psychology in Germany. (It is noteworthy that at the same time a work with the title Perspektiven der Seelenheilkunde was published by the same publisher, in which - as a supplement to Birnbaum's handbook - a systematic description of the "forms of order of mental diversity" is given in the form of a description of all psychological research directions becomes : by the most consistent advocate of the psychological justification of psychiatric thinking of his time Arthur Kronfeld , who also contributed his knowledge to this as a collaborator at the Birnbaum'schen Hdwb. of medical psychology.)

personal data
SURNAME	Birnbaum, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German psychiatrist and neurologist
DATE OF BIRTH	August 20, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH	Schweidnitz
DATE OF DEATH	March 31, 1950
Place of death	Philadelphia

[1] Karl Birnbaum: Criminal psychopathology and psychobiological crime studies. Springer, Berlin 1931, p. 190: “ Racial hygiene and criminal policy . Growing so through this vicious circle, the degeneration problem from the pathological side to a core problem of scientific criminology, so therefore will go hand in hand, the degeneration of fighting at the same time to a central problem of practical crime prevention . Individual, social and racial hygiene, with its fight against alcohol and sexually transmitted diseases, its prohibitive precautions against the reproduction of inferior people and its other eugenic measures, now comes into close contact with criminal pathology. In particular, the sterilization of criminally inclined psychopaths comes to the fore here as a measure that fulfills both racial hygiene and crime prophylactic purposes and therefore urgently requires - clearly regulated by law - to be included in the control system against all biologically and socially inferior [FN2]. Incidentally, starting from the signs of degeneration themselves, a socially significant and racially beneficial biological purification process comes to the rescue of all social and racial hygiene: Everywhere a kind of self-elimination and self-selection of degeneratives from social life and, in a broader sense, from life in general asserts itself, as it is due to the manifold self-harm symptoms in degenerate people: their increased morbidity and mortality, their strong suicidal tendency, their low tendency to marry and reproduce, further due to the reduced vitality of their generally small number of children and finally also due to their long-term detentions in penal and insane asylums, etc. is given -. "