[Psychiatry in the era of national socialism]

The question of the responsibility of medical science during National Socialism has proved a controversial subject. Psychiatry especially has been charged with complicity in the killing of psychiatric patients. Psychiatry as a scientific system, however, is not identical with the racial psychiatry of National Socialism. Ernst Rüdin was the most prominent representative of Nazi psychiatry. But even in the time of National Socialism there were important scientists who attempted to preserve the traditions of psychiatry. Among them were Kurt Schneider and Karl Bonhoeffer. By examining new sources the present essay attempts to demonstrate, with special reference to persons and institutions (Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie), the actual situation of psychiatry during the Third Reich. Only specific areas of psychiatry may be found guilty of misdeeds, but psychiatry as a whole bears an historical responsibility for the terrible events in Nazi Germany.