Mourning for Klaus Dörner, November 22, 1933 - September 25, 2022

Klaus Dörner passed away on September 25, 2022. He would have been 89 years old on November 22. Since 1980, he was the chief physician of the Westphalian clinic in Gütersloh and the first chair of psychiatry and psychotherapy at our university - until 1996. Without him, the subject in clinical practice, research and teaching would not have become what it is today: a continuum from cross-sectoral care to hometreatment and its research. Uniquely, his way of teaching. A whole generation of physicians* at our university learned how to deal with mentally ill people and their families through him. In addition, he has played a major role in shaping the social psychiatric landscape in Germany. Those students who did their "psychiatry block" in Gütersloh experienced his genuine interest in the other, the stranger, and his fine sense for the limits of understanding. "The person is the only means in psychiatry that counts" - that was one of his doctrines. Again and again, one could observe him bringing this conviction into human encounters. He could be brusque, offensive in the best sense of the word. He exemplified the old Virchowian truth: "Medicine is a social science." The main features of his understanding of psychiatry, are laid down in his textbook "Irren ist menschlich" (To err is human), written together with Ursula Plog. Here one can read how it is possible to understand oneself in relation to the other and to deal with people in crisis with respect on an equal footing. This attitude has developed through the analysis of how citizens have dealt with the insane at different times and in different countries in Europe. In 1969, "Citizens and the Insane", was published, a study that permanently changed our understanding of psychiatry. The historical experience of how easily mentally ill people were marginalized, disenfranchised and finally killed explains his commitment to the compensation of the victims of German psychiatry and the analysis of medical crimes in the 1989 collective work "The War on the Mentally Ill". He proved that the permanent hospitalization of chronically mentally ill people is nonsensical and inhumane and that all so-called "long-term patients" of the Gütersloh clinic can live in their home community. The results of the accompanying research were published in "Ende der Veranstaltung: Anfänge der Chronisch-Kranken-Psychiatrie". Klaus Dörner experienced probably the most difficult time of his professional life in 1990/91. He had to learn that in his own Gütersloh clinic an assistant had killed patients in need of protection. Dörner dealt openly with his own mistakes and reported his reflections on this in an impressive lecture in Berlin in 1992. Klaus Dörner was never everybodys darling. He was not wanted as chief physician in Hamburg. "I was a red rag for all decent Hanseatic citizens" - as he once said himself. His consistent advocacy for the dehospitalization of chronically mentally ill people was by no means uncontroversial. He said what he thought and did what he said. He belongs to the DNA of our university.

We mourn the loss of Klaus Dörner. We lose an esteemed colleague, a great physician and teacher. We are grateful that he was with us.

Witten, September 28, 2022

gez. Prof. Dr. med. Karl-Heinz Beine