Karl Edel (psychiatrist)

Karl Edel (born 1837 in Köslin ; died July 16, 1921 in Berlin ) was a German psychiatrist and founder of a private sanatorium in Berlin-Charlottenburg .

Life

Karl Edel came from a Jewish family. In 1855 he began studying medicine in Berlin, which he completed in July 1859 with a doctorate in Latin. After working as a doctor in Stolp for seven years , he returned to Berlin to complete an apprenticeship in psychiatry with Wilhelm Griesinger and his assistant Carl Westphal at the Charité there . He then traveled to Vienna for a longer study visit to Moritz Benedikt , who was full professor of electrotherapy and nerve pathology.

With this professional background, he opened an “Asylum for the Mentally Ill ” in Charlottenburg in early 1869, initially with 20 beds. A building formerly used as a bathhouse served as the building. The privately operated psychiatric clinic grew rapidly and over time, with 400 beds, became the largest private psychiatric clinic in Berlin at the time. In building the clinic he was supported by Emanuel Mendel , who worked as a psychiatrist in Berlin until 1907 and Wilhelm Sander of the same age , who had also learned from Griesinger, was temporarily chairman of the Berlin neurological-psychiatric society and director of the Berlin psychiatric clinic. Dalldorf , today's Karl Bonhoeffer Psychiatric Clinic . Among his sometimes prominent patients Edels was u. a. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner .

In addition to his clinical work, Karl Edel was also politically and socially involved: for 21 years he was a city councilor and city ​​councilor of Charlottenburg, and also chairman of the hospital deputation and head of the school system in Berlin.

Two of his sons, Max and Paul Edel, who had also become doctors, worked in the Edelschen Heilanstalt and took over the management when Karl Edel was no longer able to do so due to an illness in the past ten years. Another son was the cartoonist, illustrator and writer Edmund Edel , the graphic artist and writer Peter Edel was his great-grandson.

Fonts

• De rerum morbis. Dissertation at the Berlin Charité on July 8, 1859

literature

• Alma Kreuter: German-speaking neurologists and psychiatrists: a biographical-bibliographical lexicon from the forerunners to the middle of the 20th century. 3 volumes. KG Saur, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-598-11196-7 vol. 1, p. 274 f.
• Max Edel (Ed.) Festschrift for the 40th anniversary of the Edelschen Heilanstalt 1869–1909 . Hirschwald, Berlin 1909.
• The development of the insane in the city of Berlin . In Johannes Bresler (Ed.): German sanatoriums and nursing homes for the mentally ill . Marhold, Halle 1912, Volume II, pp. 308-319.