Richard von Krafft-Ebing

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Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg , called von Ebing , also Richard (Freiherr) von Krafft-Ebing (born August 14, 1840 in Mannheim ; † December 22, 1902 in Graz ) was a German-Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist as well Coroner .

Richard von Krafft-Ebing Richard von Krafft-Ebing - signature.png

life and work

Krafft-Ebing family coat of arms

Origin and studies

Richard von Krafft-Ebing was born as the eldest of five children to Friedrich Karl Konrad Christoph von Krafft-Ebing , the Grand Duke of Baden .

The mother, Klara Antonia Carolina, was the daughter of the famous Heidelberg lawyer and defense attorney Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier . The paternal line - ennobled by Empress Maria Theresa in 1770 - was raised to the status of imperial baron by Emperor Franz II (as Franz I Emperor of Austria) in 1805 .

The family moved first to several places in Baden and finally to Heidelberg , where Richard von Krafft-Ebing, after graduating from the university where his grandfather read law, turned to studying medicine, and in 1863 that He passed the state examination with his thesis on "The Delirious Senses" " summa cum laude " and was awarded a doctorate in medicine. During his studies he became a member of the Frankonia Heidelberg fraternity in the winter semester of 1858/59 .

First job as a doctor

Convalescence from typhoid fever took him to Zurich for a summer , where he got to know Wilhelm Griesinger's brain anatomical studies. He did internship in Vienna , Prague and Berlin .

In the years that followed, from 1864 to 1868, as an assistant in the Illenau mental hospital in Baden - mainly from Christian Roller and Karl Hergt - he received a practical introduction to the extensive field of treatment and care for the mentally ill and nervous. In a work, Knowledge of Doubtful Psychological Conditions , from 1867, he created the concept of obsessional ideas , which, like later that of twilight states , found its way into science through him. Since then, he has had a lifelong friendship with his colleague Heinrich Schüle (1840–1916), who later became the director of this institution (from 1890).

From 1868 until the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71), von Krafft-Ebing settled in Baden-Baden as an independent neurologist. Right at the beginning of his activity he looked after his younger, seriously ill brother Friedrich for a few months. After losing the fight for the life of the only 24-year-old, he went on a recovery and art trip, combined with visits to psychiatric and neurological institutions, through southern Europe for several weeks. During the war himself he looked after his patients first as a field doctor in the rank of captain of the Baden division and finally with his transfer to the Rastatt fortress as a hospital doctor. The observations that he made with typhus patients in particular, he presented in a special treatise. After the end of the war he was entrusted with the management of the electrotherapy station in Baden-Baden, in particular with the neurological follow-up treatment of wounded soldiers.

Professor of Psychiatry in Strasbourg and Graz

Richard von Krafft-Ebing
Feldhof (picture postcard, dated July 24, 1898)

Looking back on a considerable number of scientific publications at that time, von Krafft-Ebing was anxious to pursue an academic career. After a trial lecture in Leipzig under the dean of the medical faculty Wunderlich, a decision by the professors on the approval of his habilitation was to be expected. However, on May 13, 1872, after being sworn in, von Krafft-Ebing was able to open his psychiatric clinic in Strasbourg .

After a year-long guest role at the then newly established Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Strasbourg - the university clinic consisted of two beds in one room for men, another twin room for women and two rooms for the management of the clinic - the now thirty-two-year-old university professor needed these restrictions to accept only for a short time.

Through the mediation of his teacher Roller, in 1873 he was given the management of the newly established Styrian insane asylum Feldhof near Graz and at the same time the chair of psychiatry at the University of Graz .

The following year he was followed there as his wife by a compatriot, Maria Luise Kißling (1846–1903) from Baden-Baden.

On May 22, 1874, he opened the clinic in Graz and managed it until 1880. After years of efforts, he finally managed to get rid of the burdens of the dual position in such a way that he could relinquish the administration of the institution at Feldhof. With appropriate adaptations at the clinic and his appointment as full professor in 1885, he was exclusively professor of psychiatry.

Growing fame and major works

Part of his research has been aimed at examining the relationship between psychiatry and criminal law. During his time in Strasbourg he published his basics of criminal psychology , then in 1875 the first major work was the textbook on forensic psychopathology . From the large number of his publications, some of which had multiple editions and became known to other circles, the textbook of psychiatry (1st edition 1879) and then his best-known work Psychopathia sexualis (1st edition 1886), which by numerous, constantly expanding new editions of the standard textbook on sexual pathology (see also: Sexualwissenschaft ) of the 19th century was named.

Krafft-Ebing stayed in the Styrian capital for thirteen years. He was aware that separating psychiatry from neurology would be incompatible with any profitable effectiveness in both disciplines, and after constantly striving in this direction, his professorship was expanded to include psychiatry and neurology. During his work at the Feldhof and in the Graz clinic, von Krafft-Ebing laid the foundation for his world fame. In a few years his name actually spread all over the world. Sick people came to him from many countries. For the growing number of patients from wealthy families, he built a private clinic in Mariagrün that was exemplary for the time .

His book Psychopathia Sexualis later became a widely published standard work. In the same year 1886 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

Activity in Vienna

Bust of Richard von Krafft-Ebing in the courtyard of the University of Vienna

With the name that Richard von Krafft-Ebing had meanwhile created for himself in the professional world - he was also used for consultations abroad (Italy, France, Russia, etc.) - it was inevitable that he was first sent to Vienna in 1889 Appointed the I. Psychiatric Clinic of the Lower Austrian Provincial Insane Asylum after Maximilian Leidesdorf and he became Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vienna . In 1892, after Theodor Meynert's death , he was appointed to the psychiatric university clinic of the General Hospital . Here, too, several specialist publications appeared from his pen, so u. A. In 1894 his well-known monographs on " Progressive Paralysis " - a disease which he made the subject of a much-noticed lecture at the International Medical Congress in Moscow in 1897 .

Technical terms known today such as “ sadism ” or “ masochism ” were newly created by him. He studied hypnotism extensively and was one of the first to apply it clinically. He was increasingly called in as a court expert.

For the next generation of researchers around Magnus Hirschfeld , Krafft-Ebing's findings and his strictly empirical method formed the starting point for their own research.

Age and death in Graz

At the age of only sixty-two, Krafft-Ebing retired for health reasons - after he had previously celebrated his thirty-year anniversary as a university professor in Vienna - to the private clinic he had created in Mariagrün and only six months after his retirement on May 22nd December 1902, several strokes put an end to his life. He was buried in the St. Leonhard Cemetery in Graz and left behind his wife, two sons and a daughter.

“He was of a very noble nature” , it says in the obituary of the Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, “he was touching and kind to his patients. Nothing could disturb him, he possessed perfect self-control, he proved himself up to any situation. His tall figure, his steady gait, his calm gaze, his spiritual face often had a wonderful effect on the most excited patients ”.

Art Nouveau - Poster stamp of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1900)
Richard von Krafft-Ebing (bronze bust by Theodor Charlemont , 1904)
Tomb of the Krafft-Ebing family at the St. Leonhard cemetery in Graz

In 1920 the Krafft-Ebing-Gasse in Vienna- Penzing (14th district) was named after him. Likewise in the German Mannheim and in the Austrian Graz (XI. District, Graz Mariatrost ) a street was named after Richard von Krafft-Ebing.

homosexuality

Krafft-Ebing was of particular importance for the scientific study of homosexuality . Krafft-Ebing (according to his own admission in a letter to the latter) was brought to this as yet little researched field of work through the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrich , to whom he pretended that he supported his theory of " Urning " as a quasi third gender. In the 19th century, homosexuality was widely recognized by the public and especially by the churches as an expression of an immoral attitude and way of life, as a result of seduction, sexual oversaturation or degenerate hereditary dispositions ( theory of decadence ). In some countries, especially England and Prussia, it was punished as a crime against morality with harsh prison sentences. ( Oscar Wilde was one of the victims of this legislation .) On the other hand, since the introduction of the Code pénal by Napoleon , she was exempt from punishment in the kingdoms of Hanover and Bavaria and other German states. Krafft-Ebing achieved great publicity as a forensic doctor and as an insane doctor. His research, gained through criminal cases and in psychiatry, portrayed homosexuals as hereditary perverts who are not responsible for their innate "reversal" of the sex drive, and therefore not in the hands of the judge, but in the hands of neurologists and psychiatrists . He opened up a new “patient population” for compulsory treatment and for research experiments.

In Psychopathia sexualis (1886) he defined homosexuality as a congenital neuropsychopathic disorder - that is, a hereditary nerve disease. This diagnosis allowed him to speak out in favor of complete impunity for homosexuality, since homosexuals are not responsible for their "deformity" and homosexuality is not contagious. Although Krafft-Ebing was considered the authoritative body in the field of forensic medicine at the time, this theory had no consequences for impunity.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Delirious Senses, 1864

  • Principles of Criminal Psychology, 1872

  • Forensic Psychopathology Textbook, 1875

  • Psychiatry textbook, 1879

  • Psychopathia sexualis, 1886

literature

  • Heinrich Ammerer: Krafft-Ebing, Freud and the invention of perversion. (Attempt to encircle). Tectum, Marburg 2006, ISBN 3-8288-9159-4 .
  • Heinrich Ammerer: In the beginning there was perversion. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, psychiatrist and pioneer of modern sex education. Styria Premium, Vienna / Graz / Klagenfurt 2011, ISBN 978-3-222-13321-3 (revised dissertation, University of Salzburg, 2010).
  • Wolfgang U. Eckart : Medicine and War. Germany 1914–1924 , Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag Paderborn 2014, here section 2.1: As long as peace: Medicine in nervous civil society before 1914, pp. 21–32, on Krafft-Ebing pp. 25–28, ISBN 978-3-506- 75677-0 .
  • Hoff-Unterrainer:  Krafft-Ebing Richard Frh. Von. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 4, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1969, p. 190 f. (Direct links on p. 190 , p. 191 ).
  • Jörg Hutter : Richard von Krafft-Ebing . In: Rüdiger Lautmann (Ed.): Homosexuality. Manual of the history of theory and research . Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1993, ISBN 3-593-34747-4 , pp. 48-54.
  • Hildburg Kindt:  Krafft-Ebing, Richard Freiherr von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 649 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Rainer Krafft-Ebing (ed.): Richard von Krafft-Ebing: A study trip through southern Europe 1869/70. Leykam, Graz 2000, ISBN 3-7011-7426-1 .
  • Harry Oosterhuis: Stepchildren of nature. Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the making of sexual identity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000, ISBN 0-226-63059-5 .
  • Volkmar Sigusch : Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Report on the estate and genogram. In: Journal for Sexual Research. 15, 2002, ISSN  0932-8114 , pp. 341-354.
  • Volkmar Sigusch: Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902). A reminder on the 100th anniversary of death . In: The neurologist . 75, 2004, ISSN  0028-2804 , pp. 92-96.
  • Volkmar Sigusch: History of Sexology. Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-593-38575-4 , pp. 175-193.
  • Volkmar Sigusch: Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902). In: Volkmar Sigusch, Günter Grau (Hrsg.): Personal Lexicon of Sexual Research. Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-593-39049-9 , pp. 375-382.
  • Norbert Weiss: The Graz University Clinic: An anniversary story in a hundred pictures. KAGesVerlag, Graz 2013, ISBN 978-3-9502281-5-1 , p. 55.
  • Hans Georg Zapotoczky , P. Hofmann: Work and person of Krafft-Ebing from the point of view of our time. In: Gerhardt Nissen , Frank Badura (ed.): Series of publications by the German Society for the History of Natural Sciences. Volume 3. Würzburg 1997, pp. 213-225.

Web links

Commons : Richard von Krafft-Ebing  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Richard von Krafft-Ebing  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Directory of members of the Frankonia fraternity in Heidelberg. 1956-1966. Heidelberg 1966, p. 9.
  2. ↑ Karl Lenz, Werner Schefold, Wolfgang Schröer: Entlimited Coping with Life: Youth, Gender and Youth Welfare , 2004.
  3. ↑ Kleine Chronik - Vienna, April 2 - Von der Universität (right column below), in: Neue Freie Presse, Morgenblatt, No. 8839, April 3, 1889, p. 4
  4. ↑ On the development of the theoretical construct “perversion” by Krafft-Ebing and its relation to these terms, cf. Andrea Beckmann, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture , 8 (2) (2001) 66-95 online under Deconstructing Myths
  5. ↑ Psychopathia sexualis . In: Internet Archive .
personal data
SURNAME Krafft-Ebing, Richard von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Krafft von Festenberg on Frohnberg von Ebing, Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist and coroner
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim , Germany
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1902
Place of death Graz