[Hospitals in Hesse in the view of enlightened travellers].

The "Hohen Hospitäler", hospitals founded by landgrave Philipp dem Grossmütigen during the years 1533-1542, were seen as an expression of greatest caritas in Early Modern times. These protestant institutions for the poor and sick underlings of Hesse were appreciated as charitable shelters by noblemen and commoners. This situation changed dramatically at the end of the 18th century. The first critics were travelling philosophers of the Enlightenment, who visited the "mad houses" of Hesse as well as other oddities. They published their experiences in travel reports. Although the hospitals as integrated institutions still cared for both psychiatric and somatic patients, these authors only concentrated on the mad inmates. The fact that these were kept in "dark and dirty cloistral corridors" was the central point of criticism. This negative situation was confronted by the travellers not only with a demand for more hygiene but also with a call for an academically trained physician. Furthermore, they claimed for dissecting deceased patients in order to explore the nature of madness. A comparison of these travel reports with the first psychiatric publications of the early 19th century discloses a literary discourse. It leads from the reports of travellers with a general interest to specialist literature of early psychiatry. Obviously it had a formative influence on the self-conception of this new medical field, which benefited from the criticism concerning the allegedly inhumane conditions in the old hospitals. Three questions follow from this statement: 1. Which were the images produced or reproduced by the travellers in their reports? 2. Which were the standards against which the critics measured their reports? 3. In how far were the philanthropic aims of the enlightened travellers related to the self-conception of the hospitals and their inmates? Travelling reports are compared with the circumstances in the hospitals. This comparison throws light in the "invention" of the genre psychiatry. Furthermore, it makes clear how ambiguous the charitableness of the travelling philosophers of the Enlightenment was.