Franz Bühler (1864–1940): Self-Image and Self-Presentation in Psychiatry around 1919

Franz Karl Bühler, an artistic metalworker from Offenburg, had a promising start to his career: in 1893 he won a gold medal at the World’s Fair in Chicago, the same year he became a teacher at the School of Applied Arts in Strasbourg. Due to delusions of persecution, he was admitted to various psychiatric institutions from 1898 onwards, and from 1900 onwards was permanently confined to the Emmendingen Mental Hospital. As part of the Nazis’ so-called ‘euthanasia’ programme, he was murdered in 1940 at the Grafeneck extermination centre.

Being removed from society as a ‘madman’ was, in the era of asylums, a profound humiliation for all those affected. Drawings, such as those by Franz Bühler shown here, often served as an attempt to demonstrate knowledge, intelligence and social usefulness.