ERNST RITTERSHAUS (1881 – 1945)

Ernst Rittershaus was a German psychiatrist. He was born in Darmstadt, the son of a merchant. After leaving school, he studied medicine in Würzburg and Bonn. From 1904, he worked in various sanatoriums and nursing homes. In 1909, he moved to the Friedrichsberg asylum in Hamburg. In 1918, he became a professor with a thesis on ‘manic-depressive insanity’. He took up a chair in 1926. One year later, he became senior consultant at Friedrichsberg. In 1936, he moved to the Hamburg-Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home, where he remained senior physician. With the ‘Greater Hamburg Act’, he became the main person responsible for hereditary biology registration in the greater Hamburg area in 1937. Between 1939 and 1942, he again taught at the University of Hamburg. He ended this activity due to illness and died at the end of the war.

Rittershaus researched the connections between physical condition, race and mental illness. He was of the opinion that certain races had predispositions to certain mental illnesses. He thought that a ‘racial mixture’ was the cause of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. He was also interested in blood group theory, according to which blood groups represented the ‘original races’ of humans. Rittershaus was not successful with his findings. He was even ridiculed by some racial hygienists.