Florian Mildenberger: Die Geburt der Rezeption: Michel Foucault und Werner Leibbrand

In 1964, Werner Leibbrand (1896-1974) was the first German medical historian to present, in Sudhoffs Archiv, a review of the work of Michel Foucault (1926-1984). This paper examines some of the reasons leading to the fact that Leibbrand’s own generation refused to acknowledge the importance of Foucault’s ideas, while, later on, younger German medical historians, although impressed with Foucault’s writings, failed to acknowledge, first, the close relationship between Leibbrand’s and Foucault’s world views, and, second, Leibbrand’s attempts at introducing Foucault to German medical historians. Leibbrand with his Jewish wife had survived the Nazi period partly in hiding. His attempts at clearing post-war German psychiatry and medical historiography of NS-sympathizers isolated him among his colleagues, many of whom had begun their career during the Third Reich. Leibbrand enjoyed the support by the Swiss medical historian and avowed Communist Erwin Ackerknecht (1906-1988), but later turned against him, possibly because Acknerknecht had called Leibbrand’s writings “unscientific”. Leibbrand was unable to overcome his antagonisms with his contemporaries. At the same time, opposition to Ackerknecht made him appear a respresentative of the past in the eyes of the younger generation. Thus, when Foucault was accepted by the latter, they were not prepared to examine the work of Leibbrand and realize how close some of the ideas developed by Leibbrand and Foucault had been.

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