Diagnosing the Kaiser: Psychiatry, Wilhelm II and the Question of German War GuiltThe William Bynum Prize Essay 2016

Abstract

After his abdication in November 1918, the German emperor Wilhelm II continued to haunt the minds of his people. With the abolition of the lese-majesty laws in the new republic, many topics that were only discussed privately or obliquely before could now be broached openly. One of these topics was the mental state of the exiled Kaiser. Numerous psychiatrists, physicians and laypeople published their diagnoses of Wilhelm in high-circulation newspaper articles, pamphlets, and books shortly after the end of the war. Whether these diagnoses were accurate and whether the Kaiser really was mentally ill became the issue of a heated debate.This article situates these diagnoses of Wilhelm II in their political context. The authors of these diagnoses – none of whom had met or examined Wilhelm II in person – came from all political camps and they wrote with very different motives in mind. Diagnosing the exiled Kaiser as mentally ill was a kind of exorcism of the Hohenzollern rule, opening the way for either a socialist republic or the hoped-for rule of a new leader. But more importantly, it was a way to discuss and allocate political responsibility and culpability. Psychiatric diagnoses were used to exonerate both the Emperor (for whom the treaty of Versailles provided a tribunal as war criminal) and the German nation. They were also used to blame the Kaiser’s entourage and groups that had allegedly manipulated the weak-willed monarch. Medical concepts became a vehicle for a debate on the key political questions in interwar Germany.

Central European Psychiatry: World War I and the Interwar Period

“…In a continuation of medical wartime propaganda targeted against the Entente nations, psychiatrists turned their clinical gaze onto their own nation and diagnosed the political unrest as a collective "nervous breakdown" and mass hysteria (Freis, 2020). As psychopolitical diagnoses abounded, even Germany's exiled emperor, Wilhelm II, became the object of a fierce psychiatric debate revolving around questions of mental illness, accountability, and political leadership (Freis, 2018). These diagnoses of society and politics went hand in hand with far-reaching proposals for collective treatments, which usually included social reforms, eugenics, and early forms of mental hygiene.…”

Freis, David. Psycho-Politics between the World Wars. Psychiatry and Society in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 384 pp. [ISBN: 978-3-030-32701-9].

“…En un anticipo de lo que ocurriría en la guerra civil española con las (tristemente) célebres "investigaciones" de Antonio Vallejo Nágera y su equipo con brigadistas internacionales y prisioneras republicanas, médicos de la mente como Eugen Kahn, Kurt Hildebrandt o Hans Brennecke, por ejemplo, publicaron una serie de "exámenes forenses" en los que concluían que los líderes que habían encabezado los levantamientos revolucionarios de 1918 y 1919 en varias ciudades alemanas eran en su mayoría "fanáticos psicópatas", una disposición mórbida (pero, por supuesto, no eximente) que, en opinión de Emil Kraepelin (y muchos otros), era particularmente frecuente entre los judíos. Curiosamente, hasta el mismísimo Kaiser Guillermo II fue objeto de diversas (psico)patografías que, en función de la orientación y la finalidad de sus autores, cuestionaron su estado mental con el objeto de explicar el desenlace militar del conflicto, reivindicar un liderazgo más vigoroso, impulsar un nuevo régimen político o (incluso) exonerar a Alemania del pago de las reparaciones de guerra exigidas por los vencedores (Freis, 2018). En todo caso, quizá la estrategia discursiva más frecuente consistió en aplicar conceptos clínicos para describir la situación del país al final de la contienda y postular la existencia de una severa "crisis nerviosa", un "colapso neurasténico" o un "derrumbe emocional" que habría afectado de lleno al "alma nacional" (Volksseele); para profesionales de gran prestigio como el propio Kraepelin o Robert Gaupp, solo así podía explicarse -entre otras cosas-el protagonismo asumido entonces por "radicales demagogos" e "instigadores sin escrúpulos".…”