Dietfried Müller-Hegemann

Dietfried Müller-Hegemann (5 May 1910 – 28 July 1989) was a German physician specialising in Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Neurology. Despite having joined the Communist Party in 1930, he was able to pursue his medical studies and career after 1933, becoming a military "staff doctor" when war broke out in 1939. Between 1944 and 1948 he was held as a prisoner of war by the Soviets. After that he was able to resume his medical career in the Soviet occupation zone / German Democratic Republic, achieving eminence both as a senior hospital physician and as a professor with the teaching chair in Psychiatry and Neurology at the prestigious Karl Marx University, Leipzig (as it was known between 1953 and 1991) in Leipzig. Following a falling out with the authorities he relocated to the German Federal Republic (West Germany) in 1971, pursuing his clinical career in Essen, while in the short term retaining an academic strand to his work as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Life and works Provenance and early years Dietfried Müller-Hegemann was born in Laibach (as Ljubljana was known until) 1918), a multi-ethnic provincial capital within the Austro-Hungarian empire, much of which at that time was newly rebuilt following a major earthquake. As with most "underground" anti-government activity during this period, ninety years later details remain sparse. at the Berlin-based German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy, an institution with its main focus on Psychoanalysis, then under the direction of the controversial Harald Schultz-Hencke. In 1937, he transferred to Berlin's Charité (university hospital), employed as an assistant physician in the hospital's psychiatric clinic. It was also in 1944 that he submitted his habilitation dissertation which under normal circumstances would have resulted in the award of a habilitation degree. However, his work triggered a serious and protracted disagreement with the institute director Harald Schultz-Hencke, who himself published a scholarly paper on the same topic at the same time. One source refers to his having "gone through political training during his exile in Soviet Russia". Müller-Hegemann would be a conspicuously loyal party member for many of the next 25 years. It was only in 1948 that he was released by the Soviets, however, and was able to return to Berlin. Here he obtained official recognition as a Persecutee of the Nazi Régime ("Verfolgter des Naziregimes" / VdN), a badge of honour that would confer increasing kudos after the relaunch of the Soviet occupation zone in October 1949 as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic ("East Germany").

German Democratic Republic (1949-1990) Back in Berlin, Müller-Hegemann discovered that he was a Pavolovian physiologist, and in December 1950 he became senior doctor (head of department) at the Psychiatric Clinic in Leipzig. so at this stage Müller-Hegemann's award was still a rare honour. In 1955 he was appointed to a professorship at Leipzig University with a teaching contract. In 1957, a professorial teaching chair in Psychiatry at the university medical faculty was added, together with directorship (headship) of the Leipzig Psychiatric Clinic. He retained the university posts and directorship until 1964. Nevertheless, on 31 August 1964 Müller-Hegemann abruptly resigned from all his university and related posts "following an event with fatal consequences". The Karl Marx University, Leipzig was a prestigious institution where the nation's elite students obtained their degrees. Security service officers and informers were particularly numerous and active in the region. He was cleared following an investigation by the state prosecutor, but his accusers had won their battle: there would be no return for Dietfried Müller-Hegemann to the stellar career he had been enjoying in Leipzig. In reality the new appointment nevertheless fell a long way short of rehabilitation, and Müller-Hegemann's criticism of the way government policy impacted people's psychological well-being was becoming ever less "coded", even if the full extent of his fall from grace only became apparent after his resignation. A special SED ideology conference was held in February 1971 at which the party ratcheted up its determination to bring East German psychiatric profession into line with the party's ideas (no doubt closely reflecting the ideas of the Soviet Communist Party) on Psychology. Since the wall came down in 1989/90 the proliferation of new politically generated mega-walls round the planet has stimulated enduring interest in Müller-Hegemann's work on "Wall Sickness". 1973 was not actually the first time that Müller-Hegemann had labelled as a new psychiatric condition a selection of symptoms which a later generation might have been inclined to see as manifestations of some more generalised condition such as Posttraumatic stress disorder or Survivor guilt. Back in 1964 he had generated headlines in the west by identifying the then little considered mental illness which he called "KZ-Syndrom" ("Concentration Camp syndrome").

Early in 1973 Müller-Hegemann took charge of the Psychotherapy department at the Knappschafts-Krankenhaus (hospital) in Essen-Steel, in the Ruhr region of West Germany. In 1975 he reached retirement age for the hospital position: he continued to live in Essen, working as a self-employed Psychologist until 1988. It was still in Essen, in 1989, that Dietfried Müller-Hegemann, a couple of months ahead of what would have been his eightieth birthday.

Output (selection)