Edda Neele (born 15 December 1910 in Elberfeld,

Wuppertal Wuppertal (; ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany, with a population of 355,000. Wuppertal is the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and List of cities in Germany by population, 17th-largest in Germany. It ...

, died 16 February 2005) was a German psychiatrist, and a student and collaborator of Karl Kleist, who worked at the

Goethe University Frankfurt Goethe University Frankfurt () is a public research university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealthy and active liberal citizenry of Frankfurt ...

Neuropsychiatric Clinic. Along with Karl Leonhard, she was among Kleist's most prolific disciples and contributed significantly to popularizing the terms unipolar (‘einpolig’) and bipolar (‘zweipolig’) that are now used in the concepts of

unipolar depression Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive depression (mood), low mood, low self-esteem, and anhedonia, loss of interest or pleasure in normally ...

and

bipolar disorder Bipolar disorder (BD), previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of Depression (mood), depression and periods of abnormally elevated Mood (psychology), mood that each last from days to weeks, and in ...

, and which had been coined by Kleist. Her 1949

Habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

dissertation, a study of "cyclical psychoses" admitted to the Frankfurt University Neuropsychiatric Clinic between 1938 and 1942, was the first written publication which used the terms "unipolar disorder" and "bipolar disorder." She was the first woman to write a Habilitation in psychiatry in Germany. She later had a private practice as a psychiatrist in Frankfurt until she retired in 1986, aged 76. During the national socialist era, she was, influenced by the theologian

Karl Barth Karl Barth (; ; – ) was a Swiss Reformed theologian. Barth is best known for his commentary '' The Epistle to the Romans'', his involvement in the Confessing Church, including his authorship (except for a single phrase) of the Barmen Decl ...

, a member of the

Confessing Church The Confessing Church (, ) was a movement within German Protestantism in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all of the Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church. See dro ...

, which actively opposed national socialism. She later became a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and served as Vice President of the CDU women's movement in

Hesse Hesse or Hessen ( ), officially the State of Hesse (), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt, which is also the country's principal financial centre. Two other major hist ...

in the 1960s. She was a personal friend of health minister Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt, Germany's first female member of the federal government. She was a CDU candidate in Hesse in the

1965 West German federal election Federal elections were held in West Germany on 19 September 1965 to elect the members of the 5th Bundestag. The CDU/CSU remained the largest faction, while the Social Democratic Party remained the largest single party in the Bundestag, winning ...

.Die Volksvertretung 1946–1972
/ref> The Edda Neele Foundation, founded in 1995, is named in her honour.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Neele, Edda German psychiatrists Academic staff of Goethe University Frankfurt Christian Democratic Union of Germany politicians 1910 births 2005 deaths Scientists from Frankfurt German women psychiatrists 20th-century German physicians 20th-century German women physicians 21st-century German women