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Time Table • Hans Prinzhorn • The Collection in the NS Era

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Time Table • Hans Prinzhorn • The Collection in the NS Era

Hans Prinzhorn

The collection in Heidelberg is named after the art historian and doctor Hans Prinzhorn (Hemer in Westphalia 1886 - 1933 Munich), who was appointed to the Psychiatric Clinic of Heidelberg University as an assistant in 1919. The departmental head, Karl Wilmanns, commissioned him to enlarge a small but already extant collection of artistic works by psychiatric patients by means of additional works from other psychiatric institutions, and to analyse them in a scientific study. This was the origin of Prinzhorn’s Buch Bildnerei der Geisteskranken. Ein Beitrag zur Psycho-logie und Psychopathologie der Gestaltung (Artistry of the Mentally Ill, 1995) in 1922, which was the first to throw open this area to a wider audience, not least thanks to its wealth of illustrations.

Collections similar to the one Prinzhorn found in Heidelberg were also to be found in other European psychiatric clinics. They were kept in the archives, but the sole reason for storing these artefacts was for diagnostic research. Consequently Prinzhorn’s enterprise was almost completely without precedence. Admittedly the French psychiatrist Paul Meunier (1873-1957) had already examined works by psychiatric patients from an aesthetic angle in his book L’art chez les fous, which was published in 1907 under the pseudonym Marcel Réja. However, very little attention was paid at that time to the approach he took. More notice was given to the study Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (= A Mentally Ill Person as an Artist) by the Swiss psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler in 1921, which for the first time presented Adolf Wölfli, who at that time was still alive in Waldau, the psychiatric clinic in Bern.

Prinzhorn’s viewpoint was broader, though, than either Meunier’s or Morgenthaler’s. He could draw on a much larger range of material, he examined an impressively large number of aspects relating to the field, and he posed questions that still continue to occupy researchers. This is above all a reflection of his two doctorates: in 1909 in philosophy and in 1919 medicine. Moreover, as a trained singer who also liked to draw and was skilled in handicraft, Prinzhorn could draw on his own personal knowledge in the field of creative expression. Both his interest in the works of psychiatric patients and his analytic methods can be traced back to the psychologically oriented currents in art history and philosophy he encountered during his studies at Tübingen, Leipzig and Munich between 1904 and 1909 (in particular under August Schmarsow and Theodor Lipps).

In his book, Prinzhorn first develops a theory of personal expression for creative production. He enlists a complex model involving various partial drives in an attempt to explain the phenomenon of Bildnerei (roughly “artistry” in English - he deliberately avoided the word for art, Kunst, for he considered it too loaded) in terms of the psychology of the creative urge. The second part of the book then examines the representations of schizophrenic patients, and dedicates a section each to ten such artistically active patients. Although he also affords the reader a glimpse into the ten people’s life histories and personalities, Prinzhorn’s interest here is directed more to analysing the works by empathic means (Prinzhorn also talks of “Wesensschau”, or primal insight). The third part deals with diagnostic questions and parallels to other forms of creative expression. Here Prinzhorn not only draws comparisons to the art of children and so-called “primitives”, but also to contemporary art. He explains the similarities in the latter to the patients’ works as being due to a “schizophrenic feeling of existence” that could be witnessed among his contemporaries. In his view, this reflects essentially an “ambivalent dwelling on the state of tension prior to making decisions”, which had also been determined among the mentally ill. Comparable efforts made in the artistic realm do not, however, result in the same success, because “healthy” individuals largely lack the ability to tap the unconscious during spontaneous creativity. Prinzhorn compared the “genuine” works of the schizophrenics with the “rational substitute constructions” of the leading artists of his day, and came up with an unconventional and radical critique of civilisation ­ one that appears to have been the actual impetus for his book. His own position can already be compared with that of Jean Dubuffet, who was later to refer to himself as a “discoverer of discoverers”.

Right until his death, Prinzhorn repeatedly aired his views on the subject of his first book, but without ever going far beyond the theories he propounded there. In addition, his attempt to exploit the success of his Bildnerei der Geisteskranken by transposing his theories to a similar area (Bildnerei der Gefangenen, 1926 = The Artistry of Prisoners) met with failure. The main thrust of his numerous publications was in the field of psychotherapy, in which he developed an original approach that sought to combine the philosophy of Ludwig Klages with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. Of particular note are the books Leib-Seele-Einheit. Ein Kernproblem der neuen Psychologie (1927 = The Unity of Body and Mind. A Central Problem in Modern Psychology), Psychotherapie. Voraussetzungen, Wesen, Grenzen. Ein Versuch zur Klärung der Grundla-gen (1929, in English Psychotherapy: its Nature ­ its Assumptions ­ its Limitations. A Search for Essentials, 1932) and Persönlichkeitspsychologie. Entwicklung einer biozentrischen Wirklich-keitslehre vom Menschen (1932 = The Psychology of Individual Differences. The Development of a Biocentric Theory of Human Reality), as well as the anthology of his writings that he edited, Krisis der Psychoanalyse (1928 = The Crisis of Psychoanalysis).

Prinzhorn led the “unsettled life of an eternal seeker” (Wolfgang Geinitz), both in his private and his professional life. After already leaving Heidelberg in 1921, he tried working at sanatoria in Zurich, Dresden and Wiesbaden before setting up his own practice for psychotherapy in Frankfurt am Main in 1925. Yet this, too, failed to be much of a success, not least because Prinzhorn viewed himself more as a public figure. As a lecturer who was in much demand both at home and abroad, he also hoped vainly for a university position. After all of these disappointments in his professional career and three unsuccessful marriages, Prinzhorn withdrew increasingly into himself and finally went to live with an elderly aunt in Munich, where he lived mainly on the income from his publications and lectures. In 1932 he turned to the National Socialists, among others, for help in realising his ambitious plans for a “free national” culture magazine, but even here he failed.

From the late twenties onwards it became increasingly clear that Prinzhorn shared many of the views and ideals common among the intellectual currents in Germany that Armin Mohler has referred to as the “conservative revolution”. Like others among his contemporaries, he erroneously believed that he could help determine Germany’s political fate and exert as a “thinker” a personal influence on the “doers”. In a series of articles he wrote “Über den Nationalsozialismus” (= On National Socialism) for the conservative periodical Der Ring between 1930 and 1932, he examined various facets of this ideology and its practical implementation from a psychological viewpoint. Although he also levelled various criticisms, he ended up repeatedly excusing the actions of the Nazis against other groups advancing other political and world views, not to mention numerous social minorities, as a particular product of the times. A final contribution to this series, which dealt among other things with the “Jewish question”, and did not differ greatly in tenor from the previous contributions, was never published. It is difficult to establish what relationship Prinzhorn would exactly have had with the new rulers. He still managed to participate in the “Day of Potsdam” celebrations in March 1933 as a friend of, among others, the guest conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. But a few weeks later, though, on 14th of June, he died in a Munich hospital of the complications ensuing from a typhus infection he caught during a trip to Italy.

Thomas Röske

Literatur: Thomas Röske, Der Arzt als Künstler. Ästhetik und Psychotherapie bei Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933), Bielefeld 1995.

 

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Time Table • Hans Prinzhorn • The Collection in the NS Era

The Heidelberg Collection in the NS Era

The National Socialists were not the first to use the artistic works of hospital patients as a vehicle for their ideologies. Already in the early Twenties the Hamburg psychiatrist and clinic director Professor Wilhelm Weygandt collected "the art of the insane" for use as defamatory evidence. This was the period after the lost war, in which people planned the annihilation of psychiatric patients in their minds, for they were regarded as "mentally dead" and thus as useless "empty human shells" (Binding/Hoche). Contrary to Hans Prinzhorn's courageous step of attributing not only aesthetic but also existential verity to such works and their authors, Weygandt interpreted everything that was unaccustomed, confused or deformed in these pictures as signs of hopeless "insanity". And he collected this "art of the insane" with the purpose of declaring the artists of the avant-garde -- the futurists, expressionists, Dadaists and members of the Bauhaus -- as degenerate, demented or schizophrenic. His proof for this was their outward resemblance. Astonishingly, none of his colleagues contradicted him.

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists, this system of comparing pictures so as to cast the avant-garde in a pathological light was used not only in publications, but also exhibitions: the first occasion, according to Christian Zuschlag, was in Erlangen, 1933, when drawings by children and the mentally ill were hung next to selected modern works from the Mannheimer Kunsthalle ("Mannheim's Chamber of Horrors"). Similarly, after the opening of the "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Munich, 1937, plans were made to heighten the propaganda effect at the future stages of the touring exhibition by making such pathologising comparisons.

The director of the Heidelberg Psychiatric Department, Karl Wilmanns, who had lent his categorical support to the collection, was discharged in 1933, not least because he had underlined the psychogenic origin of Hitler's temporary blindness during the First World War. His successor, Carl Schneider, played a key part in the Action T 4 as senior researcher. The action was responsible for the systematic extermination of the patients who had been stamped as "incurable". He soon recognised the practical side of the Collection, and in 1938 complied with the request of the Central Reich Propaganda Office for loans for the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. The concept that Weygandt had devise - without any objection from his colleagues - now received the official seal of approval from art politics. The aim was to place bothersome artists in the same mental framework that was being set up for euthanasia, and in that way to "dispose" of them.

What criteria were used for chosing the pictures from Heidelberg? Schneider and the former Austrian law student and SA man, Hartmut Pistauer, who was an expert and the temporary director of the vilifying exhibition, had already agreed in autumn 1937 on a selection of pictures that related in either form or content to pictures by modern artists. These allowed them to prove - empirically, as it were - the madness of the artists. According to the visual rhetoric of the newly printed "Exhibition Guide", the modern artists were "mentally ill" or degenerate; their works were compared with four from the Heidelberg Collection, and made to appear equally "crazy" - if not even "crazier" and even more "inept".

It is virtually impossible now to reconstruct the actual hanging of the "insane" and "degenerate" artworks, despite the lively response of the press at the time. Likewise the actual exhibits are largely unknown. All we know are the details of a preliminary selection that was sent to Berlin, but which was not required there and soon after returned (along with a number of folders of work from the Psychiatric Hospital in Munich), accompanied by a partial list of returns dating from June 1938. The seventy or so works that were returned show that evidently the main intention was to contrast the "insane" with the modern artists and demonstrate their superior "ability". Thus for instance the numerous seascapes by Clemens von Oertzen ("Orth"), with their strong lines done in rich watercolours, and the ambitious oil paintings of Else Blankenhorn were planned as counter-examples to the "barbaric" techniques of the modern movement. The pious "Crucifixion in the Park" by Franz Bühler ("Pohl") was presumably meant to contrast with the blasphemies of the Expressionists (such as Max Beckmann's "Descent from the Cross" in his portfolio "Faces" from 1919). Much the same applies to the miniatures of Hermann Mebes, who produced a fine medley of symbols with his brush strokes. The pencil drawing Inv. No. 244 from a series of wire-like, tangled linear forms may have been intended to contrast with Paul Klee's "Zwitschermaschine" [Chirping Machine].

A great variety of portraits were chosen to damn their "degenerate" counterparts. In some cases they accord with the academic canon, in others they are rendered simplistically, as in Else Blankenhorn's somewhat expressionist portrait of a woman. At least 17 works were taken from the oeuvre of the former draughtsman Joseph Schneller ("Sell"), whose precision works could be "enlisted" for many uses. These included several drawings from what he termed his "sadistic life work", as well as collages, landscapes, townscapes and architectural views. The rich assortment chosen from Schneller's works indicates, incidentally, that the disparaging intentions transformed unexpectedly into an appreciation of the works. Also included in the preliminary selection were works by the wood carver Karl Grenzel ("Brendel") and the architect and painter Paul Goesch, three of whose pictures were confiscated shortly beforehand at the Mannheimer Kunsthalle in 1937.

While numerous artists were fleeing abroad, the "Degenerate Art" exhibition enjoyed a successful tour around the Reich. Only in recent years have the twelve stages of the exhibition been researched and documented: Berlin, Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Salzburg, Hamburg, Stettin, Weimar, Vienna, Frankfurt/Main, Chemnitz, Waldenburg, Halle. The last was April 1941. By and large the concept of the exhibition met with great approval from the populace, for it touched on traditional fears of modern art. The exhibition "concentrated", as Walter Grasskamp writes, those "fears and reservations which have long since characterised the reaction of the middle classes to modern art - if in a more civil but by no means more conciliatory manner. These reactions have remained alive ... because anxieties about modern art were not a specific syndrome of National Socialism, but simply acted then as a spectacular parade ground for its propaganda."

In a talk by Carl Schneider requested for the Düsseldorf stage of the tour in 1937^, on the occasion of its first anniversary, the psychiatrist attempted to give the reasons behind the project. In the final analysis, his rambling expositions boiled down to the demand for the annihilation of all that is compulsive and uncontrollable. This is already made quite clear by the somewhat subtle violence of his psychiatric approach. The doctor attributed, for instance, the "successful cure" of a "schizophrenic artist" who had "already produced pathological works" to the following measures: "We (did) the opposite to what ... Lombroso, Prinzhorn and others had done. Instead of saving the woman's morbid works we destroyed them, and guided her while she went about her normal, self-allotted tasks."

Schneider bases the "biological" kinship between "degenerate" artists and "madmen" on the notion that only a person who is biologically related to his model could possibly copy it. He furnishes his proof simply by finding similarities between artistic products and the "unequivocal" signs of pathology: "anxiety pleasure", "horror", "voluptuousness", "chaos", "grotesque faces", "scrawls", "revulsion", "greed", "lack of inner contour", "indulgence" - all compulsive urges that are to be eradicated in order that the "faithful, industrious, disciplined, decent, reasoning, self-sacrificing, sincere and honourable person" may come into being.

The Collection remained untouched during the period of National Socialism, for it was useful illustrative material.

Some of the artists whose works were represented in the Collection were murdered: the wrought ironwork specialist Franz Karl Bühler ("Pohl") was placed on the first convoy from the psychiatric hospital in Emmending to Grafeneck in April 1940. Paul Goesch, the architect and painter who prior to his death was interned in Teupitz, was murdered in Hartheim an der Donau. Josef Grebing, businessman from Magdeburg, was transferred from Wiesloch to an unnamed institute and killed. The jobber Johann Faulhaber from Mannheim, also interned in Wiesloch, was likewise transferred and killed.

Their drawings, letters and writings, mostly dating from the early Twenties, have been preserved by the Prinzhorn Collection as a memory trace. They allow life stories to be vividly reconstructed, to produce the first remembrances of the individual "euthanised" patients. Yet remembrance is not simply a matter of interpreting historical trails and keeping watch over them, but also of perceiving present-day outrages without side-stepping them, looking away and remaining silent (Fritz Stern). The Collection is committed to this critical, remembering stance.

Bettina Brand-Claussen

Literatur:
Bettina Brand-Claussen, Das "Museum für pahtologische Kunst" in Heidelberg. Von den Anfängen bis 1945, in: Wahnsinnige Schönheit, Prinzhorn-Sammlung, Ausstellungskatalog Osnabrück, Kulturhistorisches Museum, Heidelberg 1997, S. 6-23.

Dies., Prinzhorns "Bildnerei der Geisteskranken". Ein spätexpressionistisches Manifest, in: Vision und Revision einer Entdeckung, hg. von Bettina Brand-Claussen und Inge Jádi, Katalog zur Eröffnungsausstellung, Heidelberg, Sammlung Prinzhorn, 2001, S. 11-31.

Dies., Häßlich, falsch, krank. "Irrenkunst" und "irre" Kunst zwischen Wilhelm Weygandt und Carl Schneider, in: Psychiatrische Forschung und NS-"Euthanasie", Beiträge zu einer Gedenkveranstaltung an der Psychiatrischen Universitätsklinik Heidelberg, hg. von Christoph Mundt/ Gerrit Hohendorf/ Maike Rotzoll, Heidelberg 2001, S. 265-320.

Maike Rotzoll/ Bettina Brand-Claussen/ Gerrit Hohendorf, Carl Schneider, die Bildersammlung, die Künstler und der Mord, in: Wahn Welt Bild, Die Sammlung Prinzhorn - Beiträge zur Mueumseröffnung, hg. von Thomas Fuchs/ Bettina Brand-Claussen/ Christoph Mundt/ Inge Jádi, Berlin u.a. 2002 (= Heidelberger Jahrbücher, 2002/XLVI), S. 41-64.

 

last modified: Monika Jagfeld, 2010-01-26