The Archives have been in existence since 1996 and as a research unit integrated
into a university department of psychiatry been a unique institution in the
German-speaking countries. From a methodological point of view the Archives have
focussed on basic research, that is to say on tracing and interpreting archival
sources and on making primary, published sources of the field available to a
wider audience. On the other hand the Archives' research output has always to
embed medicohistorical knowledge into a wider timely, social and cultural
perspective. The Archives are now well-known for their thorough biographical
studies following a sociohistorical approach to the neuroscietiny_mce_markerces.
According to this approach all projects are either carried out or supervised by
a historian with a broad medicohistorical experience and specialisation. In
realising the individual projects, the Archives are more and more relying on and
integrating the medical-psychiatric expertise of doctors both at the Department
for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Leipzig University Clinic and other clinics,
institutes and institutions. The Archives' self-understanding is that of an
interdisciplinary research workshop.
Focus in the Archives work has been on research in the history of neurology
and psychiatry in the German-speaking countries in the 19th and 20th century. A
constantly rising number of both national and international co-operations have
helped broadening the original focus on local developments, although the
institutional history of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at
Leipzig University as well as the impact of Leipzig neuroscientists on the
history of their subject will continue playing a significant role. Yet future
research will consider etiological, diagnostic and therapeutic psychiatric
concepts as well as the history of mental symptoms, syndromes, and illnesses to
a much wider degree. For the time being the history of psychiatry in the early
years of the German Democratic Republic, a.k.a. Eastern Germany will constitute
a major part in our research activities.
The Archives is striving to install a research library for the history of
psychiatry. By now this library has gathered about 2,000 volumes of primary
sources and secondary research publications which form part of Leipzig
University Library (Department of Medical Literature) plus a collection of 1,050
monographs and about 2,000 volumes of medical (psychiatric and neurological)
journals which formed the library of Leipzig Dösen Asylum. The latter collection
has been entrusted to the Archives as permanent loan to enhance the basis of a
joint research library on the basis of a cooperation treaty between the
University of Leipzig and Park-Krankenhaus Leipzig GmbH as the legal successor
of Dösen Asylum. In addition to that several thousands of papers and studies -
mainly secondary sources - have been collected to add to the holdings of the
library. Against this background the Archives presumably holds one of the
biggest collections in Eastern Germany focussing on the history of psychiatry.
Yet due to historical circumstances the Archives do not own archival sources of
the university department itself, neither patients' files nor administrative
records. Hence no enquiries in this direction can be processed by the
Archives.
Last but not least, the Archives have been contributing to students' tuition
through an elective course, to be passed as one of several alternatives during
the preliminary studies, on the ‘History of German psychiatry in the 19th and
20th century' and an independent postgraduate colloquium.
