Franz Pohl

Franz Pohl (1868–1940) was the pseudonym of Franz Karl Bühler, a schizophrenic outsider artist and one of the "schizophrenic masters" profiled by Hans Prinzhorn in his field-defining work Artistry of the Mentally Ill.

Bühler was a metalsmith by trade until 1898. He remained in an asylum for the rest of his life. As he "receded into an autistic existence", he produced a large number of drawings and writings. Bühler's work was especially appealing to Prinzhorn for its Expressionist character. When Prinzhorn published some of Bühler's drawings in 1922 in Artistry of the Mentally Ill, he gave Bühler the pseudonym "Franz Pohl".

In 1940, Bühler was killed during the first Nazi mass-murder programme, Aktion T4, targeting the mentally ill. He was murdered in "a specially adapted home for disabled people at Grafeneck castle, in Swabia."