Psychiatry and criminal justice in modern Germany, 1880—1933

Wetzell, Richard F.

doi:10.1177/0047244109106682

Cited by 19 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…67 As part of the professionalisation of psychiatry in the second half of the nineteenth century, Section 51 created the legal basis for the increasing presence of psychiatrists as medical experts in German courts, and for the emergence of forensic psychiatry and criminology as distinct disciplines. 68 When Paul Tesdorpf and his publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann presented the diagnosis of Wilhelm's mental illness as evidence against his personal guilt for the First World War, they positioned themselves as self-appointed experts in a trial of the exiled emperor. 69 At the time, putting Wilhelm II on trial seemed a real possibility.…”

Section: Courtroom Psychiatry International Politics and The Questiomentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Freis¹

2018

Med. Hist.

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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.

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Section: Courtroom Psychiatry International Politics and The Questiomentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Freis¹

2018

Med. Hist.

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“…Richard F. Wetzell has helpfully outlined the mutual benefits arising from the medicalisation of penal reform and sees 'the penal reform agenda … significantly influenced by medical theories and practices'. 34 The combination of discourse and casuistry that defined forensic textbooks became determinative for Wulffen's academic case studies as well. The first reference to forensic psychiatry in Wulffen's oeuvre can be found in an eleven-page discussion of the treatment of legal issues in the play Rose Bernd, a 1903 drama by naturalist German writer Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946), inspired by Hauptmann's jury service on the case of child murderer Hedwig Otte.…”

Section: Embracing the Casementioning

confidence: 99%

Erich Wulffen and the case of the criminal

Lang¹

2017

A History of the Case Study

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In 1927, the leading illustrated weekly Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ) introduced its readers to the twenty-one most influential German criminologists of the day. Each was represented by a portrait photograph and a caption. The result was an iconography of experts in the burgeoning fields of studying, solving and writing about crime and criminals. Among the select group was Dr Erich Wulffen (1862-1936), Head of Department in the Saxon Ministry of Justice. 1 The photo essay describes Wulffen as the author of several criminological works on sex crime. Actually, the former state prosecutor can be considered Wilhelmine Germany's first legal expert; with reference to Reiner Grundmann and Nico Stehr's definition of such an expert, Wulffen was undoubtedly a broker of knowledge between specialist discourse and the wider public in modern society. 2 In addition, Wulffen wrote creative fiction on criminal psychology and legal reform. During Wulffen's lifetime his published oeuvre included an un precedentedly wide range of interdisciplinary cases: his case study compilations integrated sexological, psychiatric, psychoanalytic and anthropological insights to broaden the legal understanding of criminality. Through these compilations, Wulffen targeted the milieus of the court, the university and professionals within the penal system, but also the educated public. As a broker of knowledge between the law and the German people in the Wilhelmine and Weimar periods, Wulffen deserves special credit for shaping two new case modalities: the expert case and the case story. Wulffen's expert case studies relied on his privileged position and expertise to communicate new academic insights to the reading public. Wulffen's case stories were conceived as creative works of fiction with the purpose of illustrating certain criminal psychological insights gained in his academic work. This chapter represents the most in-depth scholarly engagement with the breadth and nuance of Wulffen's case writings, and explores the intellectual contexts and case writing traditions that influenced Wulffen's use of case modalities: his humanist education, the cases and case writing

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“…In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, reformers went even further by demanding that the state abandon retributive justice set in stone by moral philosophy and turn to empirical science, focusing on the causes of crime instead. This new understanding was to be reflected in a penal reform, in which the criminal would not be punished, but reformed and eventually reintegrated into society (Wetzell, 2009). Despite the best intentions, the penal reform was not achieved in the nineteenth century and was only implemented in a distorted manner, by the Nazis, in the next century.…”

Section: Criminal Responsibility and Reformmentioning

confidence: 99%

Limited to no responsibility: addiction, alcoholism and the law in modern Germany

Lewy

2012

Hist Psychiatry

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In Germany, a perpetrator had to be of sound mind to be convicted of a crime throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The criminal code was clear, but reality was not. From the moment that physicians accepted alcoholism and drug addiction as diseases of mind and body, the question of what to do with alcoholic and addicted criminals troubled legal theorists. How were judges to maintain the balance of justice if, on the one hand, a potential perpetrator chose to be of unsound mind by drinking or using drugs, but on the other, he was sick, unable to control his actions? As this article demonstrates, the legal system was lenient towards inebriated perpetrators as a by-product of the insistence of German doctors that alcoholism and addiction were diseases.

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Psychiatry and criminal justice in modern Germany, 1880—1933

Cited by 19 publications

References 15 publications

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

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

Erich Wulffen and the case of the criminal

Limited to no responsibility: addiction, alcoholism and the law in modern Germany

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