[Inside and outside the asylum. On the dynamics of work as therapy in Weimar Germany]

In the 1920s patients of mental hospitals were more and more treated with work therapy, as the paper will show using the example of the Staatskrankenanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn that had been founded in 1893 as Irren-Colonie. Based on a qualitative analysis of administration records and patient files the paper poses the question after the effects that work therapy had inside and outside the hospital and examines the interactions between psychiatric acting and economic as well as welfare state needs.