["Medicine is a social science" - the 200th birthday of Salomon Neumann]. / "Die Medizin ist eine soziale Wissenschaft" ­ zum 200. Geburtstag von Salomon Neumann.

Salomon Neumann (1819-1908) is one of the outstanding representatives of 19th century social medicine. As a medical reformer, statistician and city councilor, he made a significant contribution to improving social and hygienic conditions in Berlin. His most famous work was published in 1847 under the title "Die oeffentliche Gesundheitspflege und das Eigenthum" [Public Health and Property]. From 1859 to 1905, Neumann was active in the Berlin City Council for the improvement of the living conditions of the population. He was involved in the construction of municipal hospitals, supported the modernisation of sewage disposal, organised the Berlin censuses of 1861 and 1864 and was active in the field of health and social statistics. Not only was Neumann exposed to anti-Semitic reprisals during his lifetime, a foundation he founded to promote the science of Judaism was dissolved by the National Socialists in 1940. On the occasion of his 200th birthday, this article commemorates the life and work of the democratically minded and socially committed doctor and health politician. Salomon Neumann has rendered great services to social medicine in Germany.

[Hans Heinze and the Research Programme of the German Association of Child Psychiatry and Therapeutic Education 1942-1945]. / Hans Heinze und das Forschungsprogramm der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Kinderpsychiatrie und Heilpädagogik.

Hans Heinze and the Research Programme of the German Association of Child Psychiatry and Therapeutic Education 1942-1945 Upon its foundation in 1940, Paul Schröder, full professor for psychiatry in Leipzig, was the first president of the German Society for Child Psychiatry and Therapeutic Education (DGKH). Following his death in 1941, his student Hans Heinze (Brandenburg/H.) succeeded him, prevailing over Werner Villinger (Breslau). The principal task of the DGKH was considered to be the exploration of the genetic origins of intellectual disabilities and behavioural disorders among children and adolescents. Based on their research since the 1920s, Schröder and Heinze believed that genetically predisposed, i. e. hereditary, character structures were aetiological for behavioural deviations among minors. It was their opinion that, based on the characterology they had established, development capabilities of children, as well as their "value" for the community, could be reliably predicted. In order to spare the community fruitless expenditures, they suggested that pedagogical stimulation was to be diminished in cases that reached the "hereditary boundaries of education". This assessment of a hereditary and hence unswayable inferiority was contested by the "Berlin School", represented by psychiatrist Franz Kramer and social pedagogue Ruth von der Leyen. They argued that while the possibility of "brutal-egoistical behaviour" existed, given the hereditary predisposition, it could however be successfully counteracted by pedagogic-therapeutic measures. After 1933, this faction controversy within the institutionally emerging child and adolescent psychiatry was decided in favour of the "Leipzig School", which was conform to the system and ideology of the time.

[Child-"euthanasia" in Nazi-Germany--the case of the psychiatric clinic Brandenburg-Görden]. / Die Einbeziehung von Minderjährigen in die nationalsozialistischen Medizinverbrechen--dargestellt am Beispiel der brandenburgischen Landesanstalt Görden.

The article shows, through a study of the Berlin-Brandenburg region, that children and juveniles who were subjected to the killings of diseased and disabled, or mentally retarded persons during the Third Reich did not only fall victim to the operations of the "Reichsausschuss" ("Reich Commission for Registration of Severe Disorders in Childhood"). Many were also included in the gas chamber killings of the "T4"-action and in various decentralized killing actions. To gain scientific knowledge, the brains of many of these patients were examined by German neuropathologists. It will be shown that the purpose of the killings was not the painless ending of individual suffering, but that they constituted a means of freeing the public from so-called "ballast existences", whose lives were only prolonged if they could be of scientific use.

["Euthanasia"--victims and test subjects. The fate of diseased, disabled children in Berlin during World War II]. / "Euthanasie"--Opfer und Versuchsobjekte. Kranke und behinderte Kinder in Berlin während des Zweiten Weltkriegs.

This article shows, through a study of the Berlin-Brandenburg region, that children and juveniles who were subjected to the killings of diseased and disabled, or mentally retarded, persons during the Third Reich did not only fall victim to the operations of the "Reichsausschuss" ("Reich Commission for Registration of Severe Disorders in Childhood"). Many were also included in the gas chamber killings of the "T4"-action and in various decentralized killing actions. Furthermore, the co-operation of various medical disciplines in the misuse of children for scientific research is demonstrated by looking into the research on a tuberculosis vaccine. It can be shown that the purpose of the killings was not the painless ending of individual suffering, but that they constituted a means of freeing the public from so-called "ballast existences", whose lives were only prolonged if they could be of scientific use.

[Housing and work as criteria of the "Social Integration" of the mentally ill - development in Germany between 1900 and 2000]. / Wohnen und Arbeit als Kriterien einer "sozialen Integration" psychisch Kranker - Entwicklungen in Deutschland von 1900 bis 2000.

AIM: This paper analyses, in what way psychiatrists considered housing and work as criteria of social integration of mentally ill people and what models of care were suggested in Germany throughout the 20th century. METHOD: Publications in 29 German professional and scientific psychiatric journals through the complete period from 1900 to 2000 and monographs were searched for papers on the above issues. RESULTS: Until the second half of the century, integrative initiatives related to housing and work generated in asylums without the aim of a full social integration of the patients. In the activistic concept of NS-psychiatry, work became an obligation for patients and a criterion for selection that decided on life and death. Not until the late 1950s, there again was an orientation towards integration in psychiatric care in both German states. Whilst already in 1963 the "Rodewisch Theses" outlined recommendations for the rehabilitation of the mentally ill already in the GDR (East Germany), a similar mark of reform ideas was published in the "enquete" in the FRG (West Germany) in 1975. In the GDR initiatives were limited to a small number of locations. In the FRG and the re-unified Germany various forms of sheltered housing and work were established - also with significant regional variation. However, a clear discussion of underlying aims and implications for the structure of mental health care was not found in the psychiatric literature. CONCLUSIONS: In the 20th century a tradition of psychiatric ideas related to housing and work did not develop in Germany. Particularly, there were only sporadic contributions from university psychiatry. Work was more frequently explicit subject of discussions than housing. Both areas were - slowly and in discontinuity - established as criteria of integration of people with mental illnesses, which was increasingly accepted as an aim of mental health care.