Ernst Rüdin, 1874-1952: a German psychiatrist and geneticist

Ernst Rüdin (1874-1952) was one of the major representatives of German psychiatry, genetics, and eugenics in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Switzerland, he was influenced early on by his brother-in-law Alfred Ploetz, who propagated the ideas of social Darwinism and "racial hygiene" in Germany after 1890. Rüdin began his career in psychiatry at Emil Kraepelin's clinic in Munich, where he developed the concept of "empirical genetic prognosis" of mental disorders. He published his first results on the genetics of schizophrenia in 1916. From 1917-1945 Rüdin was director of the Genealogical-Demographic Department at the German Institute for Psychiatric Research, which Kraepelin had founded. After a short interruption from 1925-1928, Rüdin returned to Munich and enlarged the department. After 1933 the National Socialist government and party endorsed Rüdin's work by supplying financial and manpower support. Nazi health policy required a scientific basis to justify its actions, and Rüdin's ideas corresponded partially with this kind of thinking. In 1934 he prepared the official commentary on the "Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring." The connections of Rüdin's department to National Socialism can be understood as one of the main reasons for the critical attitude towards psychiatric genetics in Germany after 1945.