[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.

ABSTRACT

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.