Robert Eugen Gaupp (3 October 1870 – 30 August 1953) was a German

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are physicians who evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments or strictly ...

and

neurologist Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous system, which comprises the brain, the ...

who was a native of

Neuenbürg Neuenbürg is a town in the Enz district, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated on the river Enz, 10 km southwest of Pforzheim. History Neuenbürg originated as a village around a castle built by the in the 12th century. Between ...

Württemberg Württemberg ( ; ) is a historical German territory roughly corresponding to the cultural and linguistic region of Swabia. The main town of the region is Stuttgart. Together with Baden and Province of Hohenzollern, Hohenzollern, two other histo ...

. Gaupp was an assistant to

Carl Wernicke Carl (or Karl) Wernicke (; ; 15 May 1848 – 15 June 1905) was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also ...

(1848–1905) and

Karl Bonhoeffer Karl Bonhoeffer (; March 31, 1868 – December 4, 1948) was a German neurologist, psychiatrist and physician. Life Bonhoeffer was born in Neresheim in the Kingdom of Württemberg to Friedrich von Bonhoeffer (1828–1907), who worked as judge ...

(1868–1948) at Breslau, and afterwards worked with

Emil Kraepelin Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin (; ; 15 February 1856 – 7 October 1926) was a German psychiatrist. H. J. Eysenck's Encyclopedia of Psychology identifies him as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric ...

(1856–1926) at the Universities of

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

and

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

. From 1908 to 1936 he was a professor of psychiatry at the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (; ), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The University of Tübingen is one of eleven German Excellenc ...

. One of his assistants was

Ernst Kretschmer Ernst Kretschmer (8 October 18888 February 1964) was a German psychiatrist who researched the human constitution and established a Personality type, typology. Life Kretschmer was born in Wüstenrot near Heilbronn. He attended Cannstatt Gymnas ...

. Following World War II, he was departmental head of health and welfare for the city of

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

(1945–48). Gaupp performed numerous investigations of psychological disorders, and is remembered for his case studies of mass-murderer

Ernst August Wagner Ernst August Wagner (22 September 1874 – 27 April 1938) was a German teacher with depression who became a mass murderer when on 4 September 1913 he killed his wife and four children by stabbing in Degerloch. He subsequently drove to Mü ...

(1874–1938). He was particularly interested in correlations between personality and

psychosis In psychopathology, psychosis is a condition in which a person is unable to distinguish, in their experience of life, between what is and is not real. Examples of psychotic symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized or inco ...

, and was an advocate of "pastoral psychology". For a period of time, he was also editor of the ''Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie''. Sometime shortly after the passage by decree, on 15 September 1935, of the "

Nuremberg Laws The Nuremberg Laws (, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law ...

"(officially "Laws for the Protection of German Blood and Honor"), Gaupp came to the support of a local physician, Albrecht Schroeder (pictured at left in image below), a collegiate fraternity brother in a non-fighting order, die Igel (the Hedgehogs), to which Gaupp also belonged. With the passage of the Nuremberg Laws and the preemption of organizational authority to permit Jewish membership in non-dueling fraternal orders (Jews had never been permitted to join German dueling orders), Schroeder's status was made precarious because he was married to a Jew, ''née'' Felicia Rosenstein of

Bad Cannstatt Bad Cannstatt (), also called Cannstatt (until July 23, 1933) or Kannstadt (until 1900), is one of the outer Stadtbezirke, or city boroughs, of Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Bad Cannstatt is the oldest and most populous of Stuttgart' ...

, an outer district of Stuttgart. At a meeting convened of the general membership to decide upon Schroeder's suitability for membership given Schroeder's marital status and his "

Mischling (; ; ) was a pejorative legal term which was used in Nazi Germany to denote persons of mixed " Aryan" and "non-Aryan", such as Jewish, ancestry as they were classified by the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935. In German, the word has the general ...

" (mixed race) children, Gaupp, otherwise unaffiliated with Schroeder (Gaupp was 65 at the time, Schroeder 44; and the two had never before met), declared before those assembled: "Wenn der Schroeder raus muss, dann geh ich auch." (If Schroeder goes, then I go, too.) Schroeder withdrew his petition sometime before final disposition by the fraternity towards his case, and Gaupp himself left the organization voluntarily around the same time, as he had pledged doing on behalf of Schroeder. The two men remained close friends until Gaupp's death in 1953.An account of this episode is made in article authored by Schroeder's grandson, Matthew T. Witt, entitled "Sorrowful Empire, Distempered Union: Negative Dialectics and the Art(s) of Freedom," published in the journa
''Administrative Theory & Praxis''
March, 2008 (Vol. 30, Issue 1).

Publications

* '' Psychologie des Kindes'', Leipzig/Berlin, 1907

References

American Journal of Psychiatry, Robert Gaupp

Paranoid Modernism: Literary Experiment, Psychosis, etc. By David Trotter

A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry By Edward Shorter

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gaupp, Robert 1870 births 1953 deaths People from Neuenbürg People from the Kingdom of Württemberg German psychiatrists German neurologists Academic staff of the University of Tübingen Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany