Emil Kraepelin as a historian of psychiatry – one hundred years on

Abstract

This article reviews Emil Kraepelin’s address ‘Hundert Jahre Psychiatrie’, at the opening of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie in 1917, and published as an essay in 1918. Kraepelin’s publication represents a part of his late work: his commitment as a historian of psychiatry. He composed a classic narrative of psychiatric progress, which includes an outlook on desirable future developments in therapy and prevention. The present article considers the essay’s socio-historical context as well as its structure and content. The focus lies on its time of origin around the end of World War I, its sources in relation to the state of the art of historiography at that time and the history of its reception, including the English-language edition of 1962.