[Medical anthropology in academies: on the criticism of natural science medicine exemplified by Viktor von Weizsäcker].

Viktor von Weizsäcker (1886-1957) founded his concept of medical anthropology as a clinician educated in internal medicine and neurology. He tried to broaden natural scientific medicine psychosomatically focussing on the "sick human". The natural scientific approach would exclude subjectivity, and therefore he propagated the "introduction of the subject' (Einführung des Subjekts) into the life sciences. His own sensory physiological experiments and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis inspired him essentially since the 1920s. In his main work Der Gestaltkreis (gestalt circle) published in 1940 he stressed the "entity of perceiving and moving" (Einheit von Wahrnehmen und Bewegen) in regard to relevant aspects of medicine. In 1932, Weizsäcker became a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, whose president he was from 1947 till 1949; 1942 he became a member of the Leopoldina. Primarily his merits as a neurologist were highly appreciated. His medical anthropology was not relevant for his election by the two academies. Nevertheless, there was a certain repudiation against the objectivistic and materialistic Weltanschauung within the scientific community. So, Paracelsus and Goethe were highly estimated as natural philosophical guides for own conceptions. This was especially evident for the circle around Wilhelm Troll and Karl Lothar Wolf in Halle, both members of the Leopoldina, who were fascinated by Goethe's concept of "Gestalt". Weizsäcker's lecture on "Gestalt und Zeit" in Halle in 1942 fitted in the concept of those natural scientists.