Volker Hess

Fellowship 2012

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Volker Hess is the head of the Institute for History of Medicine at the Charité and also affiliated professor at the History Department of the HU Berlin. Trained in medicine and philosophy, he entered the academia with analysing the hospital as institution and space in which medical concepts, scientific theories, state interests, public demands, economic restraints and educational functions were negotiated. More recently, he has turned to the cultural history of medicine. He is vice-chair of the DFG Graduiertenkolleg “Gender as a category of knowledge“ at the Humboldt University Berlin, and he is chairing a DFG research group on the “Cultures of madness“. In 2011 he has been awarded the Advanced Investigator Grant from the ERC for a new collaborative project (together with Andrew Mendelsohn) in reconstructing the “paper technology“ of medical practices.

As part of his Fellowship, Volker Hess is working on the project Madness goes downtown. Strasbourg and Berlin in the rise of modern psychiatry, in collaboration with USIAS fellow Christian Bonah.

Madness goes downtown. Strasbourg and Berlin in the rise of modern psychiatry

USIAS fellows: Christian Bonah and Volker Hess

Madness is often described as the reverse side of becoming modern. When housing, labour, transports and communication are transformed in the decades between 1870-1930 - representing the “laboratory of the modern”- being insane or normal was redefined by the rise of modern psychiatry. Modern refers here to psychiatry where confinement was replaced by ambulant care, medical services and treatment – particularly visible in Berlin.

But the capital reorganization had a blueprint. To understand transformations in Strasbourg between 1870 and 1900, we will investigate similarities and differences, transfers and counter-transfers between Berlin-Strasbourg and more widely Germany-France in the rise of modern psychiatry and urban environments between 1870-1945. The joint project will study the embedding of psychiatric institutions such as policlinic outpatient care in the new urban topologies, the differentiation of psychiatric hospitalization, the shaping of new disease categories, and the rise of ambulant care and treatment.

The project connects with the longstanding excellence in psychiatry at the University of Strasbourg, and its corresponding wealth of archival materials. The project proposes a conceptual and theoretical renewal of assembling history of science and medicine with general urban history and geography, city planning and architecture..