[Home(s) inside and out-Artistic self-representations by psychiatric inpatients around 1900].

Abstract

Around 1900, what did "home" mean to people who, marginalized from the rest of civil society, were permanently confined within psychiatric institutions? Where did they feel they belonged (emotionally); did memories of family, landscape and politically defined territories dominate or was it the appropriation of the institutional space? An exploration of the Heidelberg Prinzhorn Collection, a collection unique in the world, provides a multifaceted answer to these questions. The historical collection contains paintings, drawings, texts, sculptures and musical compositions by psychiatric patients from institutions in German-speaking countries dating from around 1840 to the Nazi era.An interdisciplinary research project at the intersection of art history and the history of psychiatry, based at the Heidelberg Special Research Field (SFB) 1671 "Home(s). Phenomena-Practices-Representations", aims to re-examine the phenomenon of institutional psychiatry from its subjective, emotional perspective by focusing on "Home(s)" or "Heimat(en)". Based on the works and other sources it explores the motives of patient artists in the context of (the search for) affiliation, taking as its starting point the situation of exclusion from conventional "homely" connections. The examination of their artistic strategies is also conducted on the assumption that it will enable statements to be made about notions of home and affiliation within the "matrix" of mainstream society from which the patient-artists originated. This essay presents the initial findings based on three examples of different historical approaches to the subject.