Mathilde Ludendorff (1877–1966): specialist for nervous and mental diseases and Germanic philosopher

Abstract

Mathilde Ludendorff (nee Spiess, widowed von Kemnitz, divorced Kleine) was one of the first women who studied medicine in Imperial Germany. She wrote a feminist doctoral thesis, refuted Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis early in her career, detected the fraud of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing’s spiritualist research, became a specialist for nervous and mental diseases after only 17 months of training with Emil Kraepelin, as his—according to her own words—best pupil, treated General Ludendorff’s first wife and soon became his second, developed a Germanic philosophy too radical for Adolf Hitler’s taste, was considered as a primary culprit after a first denazification trial in 1949 and contested the expert opinion of her colleague Professor Georg Stertz about her own mental state. Her books are still in print and her Alliance for God Cognizance (Ludendorff) still exists and is monitored by the National Intelligence Agency.