Werner Leibbrand

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Werner Leibbrand (born January 23, 1896 in Berlin , † June 11, 1974 in Munich ) was a German psychiatrist and medical historian .

Werner Leibbrand in 1965
Werner Leibbrand. Signature 1972

Live and act

Leibbrand comes from an old Swabian family. The ancestors were pastors, doctors, scholars and actors; his father had life insurance. Birgit Hammer trained as a concert pianist while still at school. At the objection of his father, he turned to the study of medicine , especially psychiatry , and at the same time listened to philosophy and music, literature, art and legal history. His teachers included Heinrich Wilhelm Waldeyer , Günther Hertwig, Magnus Hirschfeld , Arthur Kronfeld and Karl Bonhoeffer . In the First World War Leibbrand field doctor was, in 1919 he passed the medical state examination and a year later he received his doctorate in Berlin with Ferdinand Blumenthal with the work "On tumors in veterans" . He became an assistant doctor at the Westend sanatorium in Berlin , where he stayed until 1927. In the mid-1920s, Leibbrand opened a psychiatric practice that was particularly popular with the Berlin film and theater world. At the same time, as a pioneer of social psychiatry, he founded the care of the mentally ill in open prison (see also Open Welfare ). As a member of the Association of Socialist Doctors , he was also involved in setting up a psychiatric care center for alcohol and drug addicts.

In 1933 Leibbrand's work came to an abrupt end when the National Socialists " seized power " . In protest against the exclusion of Jewish professional colleagues from the professional organizations, he resigned from the Wilmersdorf Medical Association. He then lost his health insurance license and was dismissed from his position as a district doctor. Plans to emigrate were unsuccessful. He dealt with topics from the history of medicine and intensified his philosophical and humanities studies. This led to a freelance work for the Frankfurter Zeitung . He created "Catacombs of Philosophizing" , which included Richard Kroner , Konrat Ziegler , Ernesto Grassi , Richard Müller-Freienfels , Kurt Riezler , Hans Rothfels , Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Romano Guardini . Guardini's final formulation of his Rilke studies, especially the interpretation of the Duinese elegies and the sonnets to Orpheus , was created in Leibbrand's Berlin apartment on Kaiserdamm . Between 1937 and 1939 Leibbrand published his first major medical-historical works, in particular his presentation of Romantic Medicine (1937). In contrast to the pragmatism and utilitarianism that had prevailed until then , he wrote the history of medicine as a history of problems in human relationships in the special situation of doctor and patient .

The Second World War exacerbated the situation of Leibbrands, who was forced to work in the Nuremberg mental hospital in August 1943 and from 1944 also worked at the Erlangen psychiatric clinic , where the doctor Annemarie Wettley stood up for him and his wife Margarete. Ongoing hostility from various medical colleagues ultimately forced him to flee into illegality, which had to last until the Americans invaded. He was appointed director of the Erlangen Clinic by the US military government. Leibbrand played a prominent role in the Nuremberg medical trials (1946/47), in which he was the only German expert involved. During this time, due to the inhumane conditions in the psychiatry of the time, he also campaigned for the rights of psychiatric patients, which led to further hostility.

From 1946 he began the institutional reconstruction of the Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of Erlangen together with Annemarie Wettley ; In 1947 he was appointed associate professor there. In 1953 Leibbrand accepted a call to the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , which he headed from 1953 until his retirement in 1969, from 1958 as full professor. Since 1954 he took part in many international medical and medical history congresses; he also held regular courses at the Sorbonne with Annemarie Wettley . In 1964 he made his German-speaking colleagues aware of the work of Michel Foucault .

In 1971 he wrote to his publisher Meinolf Wewel from Paris about his last major work, “Forms of Eros” , which he wrote with his wife : “Replacement of psychopathology and psychiatry in favor of an intellectual broad spectrum of idiosyncratic historical methodology, which renounces the concept of development, based on phenomenal terms in order to pull them through as a whole. ” The inspiration for this work came from Karl Jaspers , who encouraged the two authors to question myths and poetry, free of ideology or fixed dogmas, about Eros .

Private

In his second marriage, Leibbrand was married to Margarete (1885–1961), who was divorced from Friedrich Bergius , from 1932 . After her death, he married Annemarie Wettley (1913-1996).

Honors

Werner Leibbrand has received numerous awards for his achievements. Five academies have elected him a member. He received the Tel-Aviv doctor's badge and was in many scientific societies. In 1971 the Republic of France honored Leibbrand with the Ordre des Palmes Académiques , its most important academic award.

Publications (selection)

  • Romantic medicine. Goverts, Hamburg 1937.
  • The divine staff of Asclepius. A doctor's metaphysics. Otto Müller, Salzburg 1939.
  • Vincent de Paul . Berlin / Leipzig 1941.
  • Medicine. A history of problems in medicine (= Orbis academicus. Volume II / 4). Alber, Freiburg im Breisgau / Munich 1953. ISBN 3-495-44106-9 ( snippet view in the Google book search).
  • The speculative medicine of romanticism. Claassen, Hamburg 1956 ( snippet view in the Google book search).
  • with Annemarie Wettley : The madness. History of occidental psychopathology (= Orbis academicus . Volume II / 12). Alber, Freiburg im Breisgau / Munich 1961.
  • with Annemarie Leibbrand-Wettley: Compendium of the history of medicine. Banaschewski, Munich-Graefelfing 1964.
  • with Annemarie Leibbrand-Wettley: Forms of Eros. The cultural and intellectual history of love (= Orbis academicus. Special volumes 3 / 1–2). 2 volumes. Alber, Freiburg im Breisgau / Munich 1972, ISBN 3-495-47256-8 .

literature

  • Joseph Schumacher (Ed.): Melēmata. Festschrift for Werner Leibbrand on his seventieth birthday. CF Boehringer, Mannheim 1967.
  • Heinz Goerke : In memoriam: Professor Dr. Werner Leibrand † (January 23, 1896 - June 11, 1974). In: Bayerisches Ärzteblatt . 1974, no. 8, p. 582 ( digitized version ).
  • Fridolf Kudlien . Werner Leibbrand as a contemporary witness: A medical opponent of National Socialism in the Third Reich . In: Medizinhistorisches Journal , Volume 21 (1986) Issue 3/4, pp. 332-352
  • Paul U. Innocence , Matthias M. Weber, Wolfgang G. Locher (eds.): Werner Leibbrand (1896–1974). "... I know that I have to do more than just be a doctor ...". Zuckschwerdt, Germering near Munich 2005, ISBN 3-88603-882-3 .
  • Matthias M. Weber: Werner Leibbrand , in: Volkmar Sigusch , Günter Grau (Hrsg.): Personenlexikon der Sexualforschung . Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2009 ISBN 978-3-593-39049-9 , pp. 407-410

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ The socialist doctor . II. Vol. No 2/3, November 1926, p. 55: New members (digitized version) ; III. Vol. No 1/2, August 1927, p. 8: Nomination of the "Association of Socialist Doctors" for the Medical Association (digitized version)
  2. ↑ So referred to by Leibbrand himself.
  3. ↑ On the other hand, see LMU: History of the Chair (as the successor to Gernot Rath )
  4. ↑ Florian Mildenberger : The birth of acknowledgment: Michel Foucault and Werner Leibbrand. In: Sudhoff's archive . Vol. 90 (2006), pp. 97-105, PMID 16929797 .
personal data
SURNAME Leibbrand, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist and medical historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 23, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 1974
Place of death Munich