Karl Leonhard

Who was Karl Leonhard?

Karl Leonhard was a German psychiatrist, who stood in the tradition of Carl Wernicke and Karl Kleist. He created a complex classification of psychotic illnesses called nosological. His work covered psychology, psychotherapy, biological psychiatry and biological psychology. Moreover he created a classification of Nonverbal communication.

He was born as the sixth of eleven children, his father being a Protestant minister. His medical education was completed in 1928 and he worked as a physician at psychiatric hospitals in Erlangen, then a year later Gabersee and from 1936 Frankfurt am Main, to which last he was called by Karl Kleist. During the period of the Third Reich in order to save his patients from being killed by means of the T-4 Euthanasia Program, he stopped making diagnoses that would endanger a patient. In particular he stopped making any diagnoses of schizophrenia.

He became a professor at Frankfurt in 1944 and a professor at Erfurt in the Soviet zone of Germany in 1954. In 1957 he became director of the psychiatric department at the Charité Hospital linked to the Humboldt University in East Berlin. He wanted to move back to West Germany in the sixties, but was refused the permission by the East German authorities. As compensation he got increased support for his scientific work. During his lifetime he interviewed more than 2000 psychotic patients, latterly with Dr Sieglinde von Trostorff.