[Murder of psychiatric patients and destruction of psychiatric culture. The Leipzig-Dösen Saxony state asylum in the first half of the 20th century].
OBJECTIVE
The paper examines the development of the Saxonian state mental asylum Leipzig-Dösen in the first half of the twentieth century.


METHODS
A rich store of administrative files and case registers allowed us to demonstrate the asylum's history in the field of tension between therapeutic optimism and medical failure.


RESULTS
Dösen integrated important structural and therapeutic reforms, had to take care of a rising number of patients with little effective treatment measures and decreasing economic resources and it was involved in most of the inhuman deformities of psychiatry during the period of National Socialism.


CONCLUSIONS
The asylums development can be considered as an example for the breakdown of the psychiatric culture in Germany.
Roick
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C
Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie, Universität Leipzig.
D005053:Eugenics / Q000266:history*; D005065:Euthanasia / Q000266:history*; D005858:Germany; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric / Q000266:history*; D006779:Hospitals, Public / Q000266:history*; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000266:history*