Composer and director of music at Leipzig's Gewandhaus Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy died remarkably young, on 4 November 1847, at the age of 38. The cause of his early death has been a mystery ever since. Three contemporary doctors diagnosed Nervenschlag ("nervous stroke"). Starting with a short outline of Mendelssohn's pathography, this paper includes and quotes for the first time all the contemporary accounts of his death. After considering the older medical interpretations, the paper considers these reports from the point of view of present-day neurological and psychiatric expertise. It reveals that all the accounts had been filed by medical laymen, so their personal impressions had played a major role in their reports. However, it is indisputable that it was pathologic brain alterations that lead to Mendelssohn's death. Weighing up and carefully considering the sources, the authors regard subarachnoidal hemorrhage (SAH) as a likely cause of death. There may even have been some kind of genetic predisposition, since what is reported in this paper regarding Mendelssohn's death also applies to the very similar symptoms and circumstances surrounding his sister Fanny's death.

In contrast to other areas of psychiatry, little work has been done on the history of forensic psychiatry, and such work is especially scarce regarding the first half of the 19th century, when forensic psychiatry began to develop together with the neurosciences. One newly discovered archival source bears immediate witness to the genesis of forensic psychiatry and is presented for the first time in this study. That source helps us to better understand, in particular, one of the most important cases in 19th-century German forensic psychiatry - namely, that of Johann Christian Woyzeck, the murderer who became the lead figure and the decisive model for the famous eponymous drama by German poet Georg Büchner. Duke Friedrich August, the heir to the throne of the German kingdom of Saxony, submitted a separately recorded special vote (or, very roughly speaking, a brief) that denied the criminal responsibility of the murderer since he had committed his crime out of jealousy and in an emotionally agitated state of mind that eliminated the offender's free will. Though possessing no relevant professional training, the duke applied, and argued in support of, a syndrome - partial mania - that was then the subject of ongoing controversy in general psychiatry. In that context, his vote and analysis can be seen a part of the conceptual development not only of forensic psychiatry, but also of German psychiatry and criminal law.

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Artikelbeginn:[English title and abstract below] Die Verlags- und Buchhandelsgeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts ist sowohl »faszinierende Blütezeit des Buchhandels in Deutschland« (Raabe 1984, S. IX) als auch reich an Innovationen des Kinder- und Jugendbuchmarkts im Prozess der Institutionalisierung und der Modernisierung (vgl. Schmid 2018, S. 22 ff.; Ewers 1982, S. 13 u. a.). Zu Recht wurde betont, dass sich Verlage als »eigentlich bestimmende und dynamische« Instanz der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur herausstellten, weil sie »als erste die enorm gestiegenen Lese- und Bildungsbedürfnisse immer breiterer Schichten wahrnahmen« und darauf strategisch geschickt reagierten (vgl. Dettmar u. a. 2003, S. 128).   »Books Particularly Suitable as Gifts for the Young«Books for Children and Youths by the Berlin Publishing House Carl Friedrich Amelang in the Early Nineteenth Century This article, a contribution to the history of the book, presents the publishing house Carl Friedrich Amelang as an important example of specialised children’s book production in early nineteenth-century Berlin and Germany. The focus is on strategies of production, distribution, the materiality of books and their reception with special attention paid to the importance of illustrations, specific book styles and authors such as Johann Heinrich Meynier and Amalia Schoppe. It shows how this publishing house continued the tradition of eighteenth-century children’s literature, while modernising it with new genres such as adventure novels and information books.