Archiving psychiatry’s past : Emil Kraepelin’s archive and papers

Abstract

The article explores the history of the archive of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, beginning with its establishment during World War One and briefly tracing its development through the 20th century. Against this historical and institutional backdrop, the article then turns to a discussion of the archive’s acquisition of the papers of Emil Kraepelin, the institute’s founding director, in the 1990s and the ensuing efforts to preserve and catalog them. It examines some of the practices and strategies used in archiving the papers and generating their finding aids, as well as the formation of a working group to evaluate the papers. The article will then delve into the planning and execution that led to the publication of many of these archival records in the Kraepelin Edition, addressing issues related to document selection as well as the project’s funding, historiographic aims, and thematic focus. The article reflects on several of the epistemological challenges facing the project, stressing in particular the tension between the project’s historiographic aims and the archival source material.