Rudolf Denhardt

Denhardt portrait in: The Gazebo (1879)

Rudolf Emil Denhardt (born March 24, 1845 in Burgsteinfurt ; † July 24, 1908 in Eisenach ) was a German doctor and founder of a psychotherapeutic treatment method for stuttering .

Life

Denhardt was the son of the print shop owner and publisher Emil Denhardt. He married Helene Prigge in 1889, with whom he had two children. He received his medical training in the fields of psychotherapy and neurology . On February 22, 1896, Denhardt was made an honorary professor by decree by Grand Duke Carl Alexander . He was a member of the Muenster Freemason Lodge to the three bars .

Act

Denhardt dealt with stuttering as a directly affected person, because both his father and his two brothers were stutterers. In his book “Das Stottern. A psychosis. "He describes the school as" ... the playground for the occurrence of stuttering in its most severe forms ", because" so many things come together to prepare the ground for a rather lush spread of the evil ... “In 1876 he founded a stuttering hospital in his home town of Burgsteinfurt .

In an essay “The essence of stuttering” published in the journal Die Gartenlaube in 1878 , he wrote that he had already treated 870 patients from abroad, including those from Russia and Sweden and even from India and Australia . Due to this popularity, the sanatorium was initially relocated to Eisenach and, around 1900, its significant expansion. After his death in 1908, the institution was initially continued by his widow and son Emil Denhardt until it was transferred to his son-in-law Hans-Josef Knittel in 1923. In 1954 the sanatorium was closed.

Therapeutic approach

Denhardt was one of the first to look for the cause of stuttering not exclusively in the physiogenic area. He regarded stuttering as a psychotic inhibition of language caused not by real circumstances but by imagination . It is caused by a lack of self-confidence and doubts that arise in the speaker's mind. So looking directly at the interlocutor would increase stuttering.

The therapeutic approach pursued by Denhardt is based on the question of why singing does not stutter. From observing the physiological differences in singing and speaking, Denhardt developed a concept that he only used in the sanatorium he founded. The therapy methods kept strictly secret included exercises in which a wooden stick was held in the mouth like a cigar in order to allow the breath to ventilate freely during exhalation, or a small roll of canvas under the tongue. Other therapeutic measures included breathing in deeply before each sentence and speaking slowly while breathing out, stressing the vowels, stretching the first syllable of a sentence, and breathing through the diaphragm.

Works

• The stutter. A psychosis. Wedge, Leipzig 1890.
• On the pathogenesis of stuttering. In: Deutsche Medizinalzeitung. Vol. 12, No. 49, June 18, 1891, p. 567.
• An open word about “Emil Denhardt sen. against Albert Gutzmann, deaf-mute teacher, and Dr. med. Hermann Gutzmann in Berlin ”. Hofbuchdruckerei, Eisenach 1892.
• Truth and Defamation in Stuttering Medicine. Steinitz, Berlin 1893.

literature

• Urania Culture and Education Association Gotha e. V. (Ed.): Eisenach personalities. A biographical lexicon . Rhino, Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-932081-45-5 , p. 29 f .

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Denhardt  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rudolf Denhardt: The essence of stuttering . In: The Gazebo . Issue 13, 1878, pp. 212–215 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
2. ^ Theodor Höpfner: Stuttering as associative aphasia. (No longer available online.) In: Zeitschrift für Pathopsychologie. Heidelberg historical holdings - digital, formerly in the original ; Retrieved May 6, 2009 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
3. ↑ Emil Froeschels: Textbook of Speech Medicine (Speech Therapy) . F. Deuticke, 1913, p. 325 .
4. ↑ Bundesvereinigung Stutterer Selbsthilfe e. V. (Ed.): Kieselstein . No. 10 , 1980.