History
The Institute was founded as Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie (German Institute for Psychiatric Research) by King Ludwig III of Bavaria in Munich on February 13, 1917. The main force behind the institute was Emil Kraepelin. The Institute became affiliated with the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften (The K.W.Society for the Advancement of Science) in 1924. In 1928 a new building of the institute was opened at 2 Kraepelinstrasse. The building was financed primarily by a donation of $325,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation. Under the leadership of department heads Walther Spielmeyer, Ernst Rüdin, Felix Plaut, Kurt Schneider and Franz Jahnel, the Institute gained an international reputation as a leading institution for psychiatric research.
During the Nazi era, Felix Plaut and Kurt Neubürger were dismissed from the Institute by the Nazi regime due to their Jewish origin. Plaut was dismissed in October 1935.
During the Second World War, the Institute's facilities sustained much damage. Research activities of the Institute were limited until the mid-1950s.
In 1954 the Institute was incorporated into the Max Planck Society as successive institution of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften under maintenance of the foundation of 1917. The Institute was divided into an Institute of Brain Pathology and a Clinical Institute, both at 2 Kraepelinstrasse. In 1966 the Institute was renamed "Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry (German Research Institute of Psychiatry)”. In the same year, a new research clinic was opened in Kraepelinstrasse 10.
In 1984 the theoretical part of the Institute moved to a new building in Martinsried, west of Munich. The Departments of Neurochemistry, Neuromorphology, Neuropharmacology and Neurophysiology were moved there. The Clinical Department, the Departments of Ethology and Psychology remained in Kraepelinstrasse. The independent Research Center of Psychopathology and Psychotherapy were closed.
In 1989 the Institute's building in Kraepelinstrasse was renovated and enlarged with the addition of a new laboratory wing.
In 1998 the theoretical part and the clinical part of the Institute segregated. The theoretical division of the Institute became the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology and the clinical part kept the name "Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry".
The current director is Florian Holsboer.
Read more about this topic: Max Planck Institute Of Psychiatry
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)