Surname:

Budulus

First name:

Hermanis

Era:

20th century

Field of expertise:

Psychiatry

Place of birth:

Jaunpiebalgan (LVA)

* 16.11.1882

† 10.11.1954

Latvian psychiatrist.

Hermanis Buduls (1886–1954) was born on 16 November 1886 in Jaunpiebalga in the Baltic governorate of the Russian Empire (today Latvia). He grew up with eight siblings; his father was a craftsman and smallholder (Vīksna 2002:5). Buduls attended communal and private schools and completed secondary education at the municipal gymnasium in Riga. He then studied medicine at Dorpat University (today Tartu, Estonia) from 1905 to 1911, during which time he already published several popular-science books on psychiatric topics, seemingly influenced by the writings of German psychiatrists leaning towards somaticism (Emil Kraepelin [BB1] had been teaching at Dorpat University between 1886 and 1891).

In 1912, Buduls became an assistant to Prof. Vladimirs Čižs (1855–1922), who studied the psychopathology of litterateurs. In the same year, he published a biography of the writer Jānis Poruks (1871–1911), who had been one of Buduls’ patients until his premature death.He obtained his doctorate with a thesis on comparative racial psychiatry, written in Russian language, in 1914. Between April 1914 and the outbreak of WW1, he visited the psychiatric clinic of Charité Berlin, then directed by Karl Bonhoeffer.

Clinical work and academic career

During the war, Buduls initially worked at a psychiatric clinic in St. Petersburg and then served in the war hospitals of Minsk and Smolensk. From 1919, he was director of the psychiatric hospital Sarkankals in Riga, which had been established as a private asylum in 1862 and become a municipal clinic in 1872. There he introduced malaria inoculation (fever therapy) in treating syphilitic paresis (end-stage neurosyphilis), an approach developed by Julius Wagner-Jauregg in 1917 (Libiete 2011: 260). He was elected founding president of the Latvian Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists in 1924 and appointed professor at the medical school of the University of Latvia in 1926.

At his time, Buduls was considered one of the leading psychiatrists of his country. His two-volume work Psihiatrija(Psychiatry, Vol. 1 published in 1924, Vol. 2 in 1929) was the first textbook on psychiatry in the Latvian language. This book consistently attributed “mental disorders” to biological causes: Buduls claimed that psychotherapy was “useless”, psychoanalysis failed to achieve therapeutic success (1924: 180) and that there was no point in having therapeutic conversations with psychotic patients (1929: 92). He later described the history of his own institution in his 1938 book Latvijas galvas pilsētas Rīgas Sarkankalna slimnīcas vēsture (The History of Sarkankals Clinic in the Latvian Capital Riga), which also included several patient biographies (Buduls 1938: 194–240).

In 1936, in his function as clinic director, Buduls ordered Hermanis Saltups (1901–1968) to try the novel insulin coma therapy (ICT) on patients diagnosed with schizophrenia at Sarkankals hospital. After only a few weeks, however, Buduls warned against unfounded optimism, pointing out that the method required the outmost watchfulness of doctors involved and could only be applied in strong and physically healthy patients (Libiete 2011: 260). At least two patients had died during treatment (Historical State Archive of Latvia, document 2917.1.4 – 48).

Eugenics

Buduls endorsed eugenic population policies and wanted to keep “weak” individuals from procreating (Kuznecovs 2013: 149). In the 1930s, he and his student Verners Kraulis (1904–1944) advised the Latvian government on the implementation of eugenic programmes that were, however, more moderate than the Nazi laws on racial hygiene (Weiß-Wendt & Yeomans 2013: 337). His article Rases labdzimtība (Racial Well-Bornness) was supportive of eugenic strategies but warned against exaggerated expectations, as many questions regarding the inheritability of mental disorders still remained to be answered (Buduls 1936: 4). He argued that most of the severely “mentally diseased” were institutionalised anyway and thus had no chance to procreate, and even those living outside mental facilities usually did not start their own families.

In Buduls’ view, there was nothing wrong with sterilisation in principle. He recommended it for individuals with “congenital imbecility” as this defect was “unusually often” passed on from generation to generation, adding that sterilisation could also be useful in other cases in order to prevent unwanted emergences both in personal life and for the sake of the entire nation.

Nazi patient killings in Riga

Shortly after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, German troops occupied the territory of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (cf. Felder 2009). Almost immediately thereafter, the elimination of unwanted populations began; this included the killing of more than 2.300 psychiatric patients in mass shootings (for the number of victims documented in archives, see Vīksne 2003: 324–350). One objective was to clear the facilities of patients to make room for wounded soldiers. On 1 September 1941, the SS shot 133 Jewish patients of Sarkankals hospital, assisted by Latvian auxiliary policemen. Another 368 inmates were killed on 29 January 1942. Buduls reportedly tried to prevent this mass murder of patients: when he learned of the occupiers’ plans, he ordered that as many patients as possible be released and no new ones be admitted (Vīksne 2003: 363). The clinic staff, however, followed the German order to hand over patient lists, and all patients who had been in treatment for more than five years were subsequently taken to execution by Latvian auxiliary police.

The rest were moved to Aleksandra Augustums (Alexander Hill), the only remaining psychiatric facility in Riga. The inmates of this institution were executed in Bikernieki forest on 14 April 1942. Altogether, the SS killed 709 patients of these two psychiatric clinics in Riga. But there are some 92 patients with unknown fates – they might have been saved by Buduls and his staff. On 17 February 1942, the German authorities dismissed Buduls as director and closed the psychiatric clinic of Sarkankals hospital.

Medical liaison officer in Wiesloch

When Latvia came back under Soviet rule in late 1944, Buduls fled due to the imminent threat to members of the Latvian bourgeois elite. He made it to Germany and from July 1949 worked for the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) at the psychiatric clinic in Wiesloch near Heidelberg. In the function of medical liaison officer, he was in charge of foreign patients, such as forced workers, deportees, displaced persons or refugees (cf. Peschke 2006). He apparently sometimes challenged diagnoses made by his German colleagues, who were unable to communicate with patients from the Soviet Union, and tried to save the latter from deportation to their home country (Damolin 2006). Until the end of his life, he remained firmly convinced that mental disorders were ultimately due to somatic causes (Buduls 1951: 3). Hermanis Buduls died on 10 November 1954 and was buried on the premises of the Wiesloch clinic.

Awards

Three Star Order of the Latvian Republic, 3rd class.

Literature

Buduls, H. (1909): Laulība un cilvēka dzīves mērķis: bioloģisks un ētisks apcerējums. Rīga: Ed. Zirģelis.

Buduls, H. (1910): Cilvēka nervi, viņu būve un normālās darbibas. Rīga: RLB.

Buduls, H. (1911): Poruku Jānis savas garīgās dzīves krēslainās dienās. Rīga: J. Rozes apgāds.

Buduls, H. (1912): Nervu veselības kopšana. Rīga: Ed. Zirģelis.

Buduls, H. (1914): К сравнительной расовой психиатрии: диссертация на степень доктора медицины. Юрьев: Э. Бергман. 

Budul[s], H. (1915): Beitrag zur vergleichenden Rassenpsychiatrie. In: Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie 37, pp. 199–204.

Buduls, H. (1923): Par alkoholismu. Rīga: RPD Žūpības apkarošanas komis.

Buduls, H. (1924): Psīchiatrija, vispārīgā daļa. Rīga: Valters un Rapa.

Buduls, H. (1925): Poruka dvēseles noskaņas krēslainās dienās. Rīga: J. Rozes apgādībā.

Buduls, H. (1929): Psīchiatrija: speciālā daļa. Rīga: Valters un Rapa.

Buduls, H. (1931): Nervu veselības kopšanas skolas gados. Rīga: Izdevis A. Gulbis.

Buduls, H. (1936): Rases labdzimtība. In: Jaunākas Ziņas, Nr. 125, p. 4.

Buduls, H. (1938): Latvijas galvas pilsētas Rīgas Sarkankalna slimnīcas vēsture. Rīga: Pilsētas valdes izdevums.

Buduls, H. (1950): Veseliga dzīve: cilvēka organisma uzbūve un kopšana. Stockholm: Daugava.

Buduls, H. (1951): [Interview]. In: Laiks, No. 38, issue of 20 May 1951, p. 3

Buduls, H. (1954): Cilvēks dzīves spogulī. Stockholm: Daugava.

Buduls H. (1978): Prof. Dr. Med. Hermana Buduļa Autobiogrāfija. In: LĀZA Apkārtraksts, No. 115, pp. 28–30.

Damolin, M. (2006): Die Vergessenen des Weltkriegs. IRO-Patienten in Wiesloch. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 291, issue of 16 December 2006, p. 3.

Felder, B. M. (2009): Lettland im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Zwischen sowjetischen und deutschen Besatzern 1940–1946. Paderborn: Schöningh.

Kuznecovs, V. (2013): Latvian Psychiatry and Medical Legislation of the 1930s and the German Sterilisation Law. In: B. M. Felder, P. J. Weindling (eds.): Baltic Eugenics: Bio-Politics, Race and Nation in Interwar Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania 1918–1940. Amsterdam, New York: Rudopi, pp. 147–168.

Lībiete, I. (2011): Fighting Schizophrenia: Beginnings of Somatic Treatments in Psychiatry in Riga Sarkankalns Hospital in the 1930s. In: Baltic Journal of European Studies 1(1), pp. 257–268.

Lībiete, I. (2011a): Latvijas Universitātes Psihiatrijas katedras izveide un darbība 20. gadsimta 20. gados. In: Ilgonis I. Vilks (ed.): Zinātņu vēsture un muzejniecība. Latvijas Universitātes Raksti, 763. Sējums, Rīga: Latvijas Universitāte, pp. 54–64.

Lībiete, I. (2014) Psihiatrijas attīstība Latvijā no 1918. līdz 1940. gadam. Doktora disertācija. Rīga: Rīgas Stradiņa universitāte.

Lībiete, I. (2014a): Development of Psychiatry in Latvia between 1918 and 1940. Summary of the Doctoral Thesis. Specialty – History of Medicine. Riga: Rīgas Stradiņa universitāte. URL: http://www.rsu.lv/eng/images/Documents/Doctoral_theses/ILibiete_Summary_EN.pdf [accessed on 10 October 2016].

Peschke, F. E. (2006): Schicksal und Geschichte der Zwangsarbeiter, Ostarbeiter, “Displaced Persons” und “Heimatlosen Ausländer” in der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt, dem Mental Hospital, dem Psychiatrischen Landeskrankenhaus Wiesloch und dem Psychiatrischen Zentrum Nordbaden. Husum: Matthiesen.

Vīksna, A. (2002): Profesors Hermanis Buduls. Riga: Medicīnas vēstures muzejs.

Vīksne, R. (2003): Garīgi slimo iznīcināšana Latvijā nacistikās okupācijas laikā. In: A. Caune (ed.): The Issues of the Holocaust Research in Latvia. Reports of an International Seminar, 29 November 2001, Riga and the Holocaust Studies in Latvia in 2001–2002 (Symposium of the Commission of the Historians of Latvia, Volume 8). Rīga: Latvijas vēstures institūta apgāds, pp. 324–347.

Weiß-Wendt, A., R. Yeomans (2013): Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe 1938–1945. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Udo Bongartz

Photograph: unknown / Source: Wikimedia / public domain.