SEBASTIAN STIERL (30.3.1952 – )

Sebastian Stierl comes from the Rhineland. After graduating from high school in 1971, he studied medicine in Liège, Marburg and Lübeck, where he gained his doctorate in 1982. After completing his specialist training as a psychiatrist at the Rheinische Landesklinik Viersen, he joined the Lower Saxony State Hospital in Lüneburg in 1989. From 2007 until his retirement in 2017, he was Medical Director of the Lüneburg Psychiatric Clinic. He and his wife Marlene have four children. In his spare time, he is an enthusiastic musician and occasionally gives concerts with his cello.

Like his predecessor Jürgen Lotze, he is a firm believer in social psychiatric approaches. During his professional career, he tirelessly campaigned for community-based and localised care for patients. Dealing with the history of psychiatry under National Socialism was also part of his professional identity. From 1999, he devoted himself intensively to the reappraisal of the Lüneburg hospital murders. He became the spokesman for the working group that set up a memorial site after producing a commemorative publication to mark the centenary of the Lüneburg clinic.

He became the founder of the supporting association and was its chairman until 2022. During this time, an educational centre for human rights, social psychiatry and encounters was established. To this day, he continues to volunteer for social psychiatry, from which responsibility for dealing with mental illness today grows, and for the Lüneburg Peace Alliance.