Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry

The Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry (German: Max-Planck-Institut für Psychiatrie) is a scientific institute based in the city of Munich in Germany specializing in psychiatry. Currently directed by Elisabeth Binder, Alon Chen and Martin Keck, it is one of the 81 institutes in the Max Planck Society.

The Institute was founded as the German Institute for Psychiatric Research (German: Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie) by King Ludwig III of Bavaria in Munich on February 13, 1917. The main force behind the institute was the psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. Substantial funding was received from the Jewish-American banker James Loeb, as well as from the Rockefeller Foundation, well into the 1930s. The Institute became affiliated with the K. W. Society for the Advancement of Science (German: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften) 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.

Rudin, a student of Kraepelin's, took over the directorship of the Institute in 1931, while also remaining head of genetics. As well as fostering an international scientific reputation, the Institute developed close ties with the Nazi regime. Rudin (along with Eugen Fischer of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics) joined expert government committees. Rudin wrote the official commentary endorsing the forced sterilization laws. He was such an avid proponent that colleagues nicknamed him the "Reichsfuhrer for Sterilization". Felix Plaut (in 1935) and Kurt Neubürger were dismissed from the Institute due to their Jewish origin. Copies of Rudin's lecture notes show that his teaching at the Institute was anti-semitic. The Institute received a great deal of government funding, which was openly designed to further the Nazi regime's aims. Some Institute funds seem to have gone on to support the work of Institute employee Julius Duessen with Carl Schneider at Heidelberg University, clinical research which from the beginning involving killing children.