Kurt Beringer

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The mescaline rush. Kurt Beringer's habilitation thesis, 1927

Kurt Beringer (born June 24, 1893 in Ühlingen , † August 11, 1949 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German neurologist , psychiatrist and university professor who was a pioneer in drug research and psychonautics .

First years, studies and career entry

Kurt Beringer was the son of the entrepreneur Emil Beringer and his wife Wilhelmine, nee Binder. He laid on humanistic Grand Ducal School in Karlsruhe in 1911, the school-leaving examination , and then studied at the University of Heidelberg and Kiel medicine. From 1915 to 1918 he took part in the First World War as a field doctor on the Eastern Front. After the end of the war, he completed his medical studies in Heidelberg in 1919 with the state examination, received his license to practice medicine and was awarded a Dr. med. PhD .

From 1919 to 1920 he worked under Ludolf von Krehl at the Medical Clinic in Heidelberg. He then worked for twelve years at the Psychiatric and Neurological University Clinic in Heidelberg under Karl Wilmanns , where he completed his training as a specialist in psychiatry and neurology. In 1924 he interrupted his work in Heidelberg for a year to practice as a neurologist in Karlsruhe and then returned to the university.

In 1925 Beringer completed his habilitation in Heidelberg with a paper on the history and appearance of mescaline intoxication, which was published in 1927. This psychiatric-exploratory examination was used by Beringer to analyze pathological phenomena of consciousness, during which doctors and medical students recorded their experiences of intoxication in self-experiments after mescaline injections. Beringer was in the tradition of Heidelberg drug research, in which he, like his colleague Wilhelm Mayer-Gross (1889–1961) , devoted himself to “sublime investigations” of coffee and tea, but also morphine , mescaline and cocaine .

University professor in Munich and Freiburg

At the beginning of January 1928, like Mayer-Gross, as a representative of clinical psychopathology, he co-founded the journal Der Nervenarzt . In 1928 he took part in the German-Russian syphilis expedition to Burjato-Mongolia as a representative of psychiatry and neurology. In 1931 he received an extraordinary professorship in Heidelberg.

At the beginning of November 1932 he succeeded August Bostroem as senior physician at the Munich University Clinic under Oswald Bumke , where he was appointed associate professor. At the beginning of April 1934, Beringer accepted a position at the University of Freiburg , where he worked as a professor of psychiatry and neurology until his death and, as Alfred Hoche's successor, also headed the local psychiatric and mental hospital. Several times he refused appointments to other universities, such as Tübingen (1935), Cologne and Prague (1938), Strasbourg (1941) and Frankfurt (1945). In Freiburg, he pushed ahead with the modernization of the clinic and introduced occupational therapy for patients . He also set up laboratories and an X-ray department.

Second World War

During the Second World War , he was an advisory military psychiatrist in Military District V in Freiburg from 1939 to 1942 , and in this role he was also temporarily assigned to the 4th Army during the German-Soviet War . Bering was admitted to the NSDAP in 1941 by “the Fuehrer's pardon”, as he had belonged to a Masonic lodge from 1925 to 1932 . During the Nazi euthanasia program , he saved psychiatric patients by hiding them in the university clinic.

post war period

After the end of the war he was classified as politically unencumbered in the context of denazification . After being reappointed, he was Dean of the Medical Faculty of the University of Freiburg from 1945 to 1946 , which he reorganized. He was instrumental in setting up the neurosurgical clinic. His main research interests were drug research, forensic psychiatry , neurology and, in this context, also medical-legal borderline questions. He was also the author of numerous articles in professional journals. Beringer had been married to the pediatrician Cornelie since 1921, and the couple had a daughter. Beringer died on August 11, 1949 as a result of a pulmonary embolism . His estate is in the university archive of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau.

Fonts (selection)

  • Sacral anesthesia with special consideration of the results at the Heidelberg University Women's Clinic 1914–1918 , dissertation, University of Heidelberg 1920
  • The mescaline rush. Its history and mode of publication , Julius Springer Verlag, Berlin 1927 and reproduction 1969 (also habilitation thesis, Heidelberg University 1925)
  • The inheritance of schizophrenia . In: Handbuch der Geisteskrankheiten (9 volumes), Volume 5: Die Schizophrenie , Springer, Berlin 1932.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ H. Schott: Medical history (s): Medical self-experiment - Meskalinrausch . In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt , vol. 102, issue 38 of September 23, 2005, A 2564
  2. ↑ Henrik Jungaberle and Rolf Verres: rituals of intoxication. A new chapter in drug research in Heidelberg . In: Ruperto Carola , 2/2003
  3. ↑ Volker Roelcke: The development of psychiatry between 1880 and 1932. Theory formation, institutions, interactions with contemporary scientific and social policy . In: Rüdiger vom Bruch (Ed.): Sciences and Science Policy: Inventories of formations, breaks and continuities in Germany in the 20th century. Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, p. 120
  4. ^ Richard Jung: Kurt Beringer † . In: Archive for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases of December 30, 1949, Volume 183, Issue 3, pp. 293-301
  5. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 42
  6. ^ Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia . Volume 1: Aachen - Braniß , Munich 2005, p. 570
  7. ^ University archive of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg i.Br .: inventory C0058. Estate of Kurt Beringer (1587–1974) , Freiburg i. Br. 1995 (edited by Ralph-Bodo Klimmeck)
personal data
SURNAME Beringer, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German neurologist, psychiatrist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Ühlingen
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1949
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau