INNOVATION AND DESTRUCTION - PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH AND EUTHANASIA AT THE PSYCHIATRIC DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY-OF-HEIDELBERG, 1939-1945

The history of German psychiatry is characterized not only by innovati ve thought in the tradition of Kraepelin and Jaspers, but also by the ''euthanasia'' program that resulted in the killing of more than 100,0 00 psychiatric patients and mentally handicapped people. Exemplified b y the Psychiatric Department at the University of Heidelberg, the rela tion between psychiatric research and the systematic kilting of patien ts during the time of National Socialism is analysed. The first part o f the paper summarizes the historical background of the general condit ion of German psychiatry in the 1930s and 1940s. The second part gives an outline of the biography and work of Carl Schneider (1891-1946), h ead of the Psychiatric Department at Heidelberg until 1945. It can be shown that the call for intensive therapy for those patients who were to be reintegrated into society was connected with the killing of thos e who were considered to be beyond reach of any active therapeutic app roach. This is also the context of C. Schneider's research program con cerning mentally handicapped children. The historical reconstruction o f research activities, drawing on the patients' files and other docume nts, reveals that out of 52 children who had been examined, 20 were ki lled in the asylum of Eichberg in order that their brains might be exa mined in Heidelberg. The findings are discussed in view of the ongoing historiographical debate on the relationship between the politics of National Socialism and contemporary science.