Halle (dpa / sa) – They reflect the work and everyday life of psychiatry in four political systems: The University of Halle is now securing evidence from 100 years of psychiatric history and making them accessible to research. Around 232 linear meters of files from the years 1888 to 1989 will be processed in the coming years and transferred to the archive, the university announced on Tuesday. They cover the period from the German Empire to the Weimar Republic, National Socialism and the GDR. The university receives financial support of 136,000 euros from a special federal program for the preservation of written cultural assets.
“The history of psychiatry is always also the history of society. The files not only provide an insight into the history of the subject. They also show what moved people back then, what fears and worries they had,” explained medical historian Florian Bruns from the Institute for History and Ethics medicine at the Martin Luther University.
According to the information, the files will be cleaned, deacidified, packed for archiving and made available for research in the Leipzig Book Preservation Center.
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