1 See Paul Lerner, `Psychiatry and Casualties of War in Germany, 1914—1918', Journal of Contemporary History, 35, 1 (January 2000), 13—28; Doris Kaufmann, `Science as Cultural Practice: Psychiatry in the First World War and Weimar Germany', Journal of Contemporary History, 34, 1 (January 1999), 125—44. For research on male hysteria and British psychiatrists' assumptions about social class, see Elaine Showalter, `Rivers and Sassoon: The Inscriptions of Male Gender Anxieties' in Margaret Randolph Higonnet, Jane Jenson et al. (eds), Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars (New Haven, CT 1987), 61—9.

2 On the experiences of both physically- and psychologically-disabled veterans in Kaiserreich and Weimar Germany, particularly in terms of social and economic re-integration, see Robert Weldon Whalen, Bitter Wounds — German Victims of the Great War, 1914—1939 (Ithaca, NY 1984); Bernd Ulrich, `. . . als wenn nichts geschehen wäre', in Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich and Irana Renz (eds), “Keiner fühlt sich hier mehr als Mensch” — Erlebnis und Wirkung des Ersten Weltkriegs (Frankfurt am Main 1986), 140—56; for veterans' writings on the psychological stress caused by the war, see Bernd Ulrich, Die Augenzeugen — Deutsche Feldpostbriefe in Kriegsund Nachkriegszeit, 1914—1933 (Essen 1997), 191—226.

3 Psychiatrists' conflation of mental illness and the rise of leftist political agitation at the end of the war is well documented by Paul Lerner in Hysterical Men: War, Neurosis and German Mental Medicine, 1914—1921 (Dissertation, Columbia University 1996), 364—5.

4 See, for example, Paul Plaut, `Psychographie des Kriegers' in Beiträge zur Psychologie des Krieges (Leipzig 1920), 110—18. For comparison with Britain, see Joanna Bourke's fascinating work Dismembering the Male — Male Bodies, Britain and the Great War (Chicago 1996), 111—12. Bourke shows how in Britain, officers suffering from shell shock were diagnosed with `anxiety neurosis', while enlisted men were labelled `hysterics'.

5 See Bourke, op. cit., for further comparisons to Britain. In Britain, mentally-disabled veterans were also seen as deviant and shameful after the war. In Germany, this sentiment was intensified by the lost war and, as I will argue here, the war neurosis question was increasingly politicized by groups seeking to assign blame for defeat.

6 Whalen, op. cit., 128.

7 Franz Schweyer, Ministerialdirektor im Reichsarbeitsministerium, Die Ansprüche der Kriegsbeschädigten und Kriegerhinterbliebenen nach dem neuen Reichsversorgungsgesetze (Berlin 1920).

8 In postwar debates, state psychiatrists disagreed on the degree to which mental wounds appeared in men who were psychologically healthy before the war. This was a crucial question for the Labour Ministry, as only those with directly-related war wounds qualified for pensions. See, for example, P. Lißmann, Die Wirkungen des Krieges auf das männlichen Geschlechtsleben (München 1919), 28.

9 Bundesarchiv (hereafter BA) Berlin. Reichsarbeitsministerium (hereafter RAM). R3901/Film 36206. Verfassungsgebende Preußische Landesversammlung, Förmliche Anfrage der Abgeordneten Dr Beyer (Westpreußen) und Genossen, 28 March 1919. As a former military doctor, Beyer was exceptional in his political views. Observing the treatment of war neurotics in field hospitals, he concluded that men were treated unjustly compared to officers.

10 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36072. `Eingaben und Anträge allgemeinen Inhalts in Sachsen der Kriegsbeschädigtenfürsorge und Kriegswohlfahrtspflege.' Reichsbund letter to Ebert, signed by Tiedt, 30 November 1918.

11 BA Berlin. RAM. 3901/Film 36072. `Eingaben und Anträge allgemeinen Inhalts in Sachsen der Kriegsbeschädigtenfürsorge und Kriegswohlfahrtspflege.' Reichsbund regional branch Hanau a.M. letter to workers' and soldiers' councils, 10 December 1918.

12 BA Berlin. RAM. 39011/Film 36137. `Spenden für Kriegsbeschädigten und Hinterbliebenen, Allgemeines'. Polizeipräsident Richter to the Interior Ministry, Berlin, 24 July 1922. See also newspaper clippings in this file, including `Eine Massenepidemie geheilt', Deutsche Tageszeitung, December 1919 (day of issue not given in file).

13 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36137. `Spenden für Kriegsbechädigten und Hinterbliebenen, Allgemeines.' Letter from Reichsbund to Labour Ministry, 3 January 1921.

14 For further background on pension neurosis, see Lerner, op. cit., 382—411. See also George L. Mosse, `Shell Shock as a Social Disease', Journal of Contemporary History , 35, 1 (January 2000), 101—8.

15 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36027. `Beschwerden Beschädigten über Begutachtung und Gutachter.' Letter from Reichsbund to Labour Ministry concerning medical examinations at Versorgungsamt Frankfurt a.M., 13 April 1927.

16 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36027. Letter from Reichsbund to Labour Ministry, 7 February 1923.

17 Over-bureaucratization as a source of failure for Weimar's welfare system has been analysed by, among others, Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic — The Crisis of Classical Modernity, trans. Richard Deveson (New York 1989), 130—40; David Crew, `The Ambiguities of Modernity: Welfare and the German State from Weimar to Hitler' in Geoff Eley (ed.), Society, Culture and the State in Germany, 1870—1930 (Ann Arbor, MI 1996), 319—45.

18 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36028. `Beschwerden Beschädigten über Begutachtung und Gutachter.' Letter from Reichsbund to Labour Ministry, 23 June 1927.

19 See, for example, Medizinalrat Gustav Kolb, Direktor der Heil und Pflegeanstalt Erlangen, Die nervös Kriegsbeschädigten vor Gericht und Strafvollzug — Nach einem Vortrag für Richter, Ärzte und Strafanstaltsbeamte (München 1919), 34—7. Dr Kolb was a former director of several field hospitals that specialized in war neurosis. He was hired in 1919 by the Ministry of Justice and the Interior Ministry to give judges, lawyers and others in the judicial system a set of guidelines for distinguishing psychologically-disabled soldiers from men whose mental disorders were not related to wartime service. Kolb argued that the Social Democratic-led republic did not provide men with the essential values of work, national duty and respect for law and property. Instead, he argued, the republic rejected the authority of doctors and encouraged men to dwell on their injuries rather than recover.

20 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36027. Letter from Hartmann Schmoll, included in Reichsbund report, sent to the Labour Ministry, 21 October 1924.

21 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36027. Report from Reichsbund member Hölter, Barmen district, delivered to Labour Ministry, 26 September 1924.

22 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36027. Letter from Reichsbund to Labour Ministry, 12 November 1924. See also report from Hauptversorgungsamt Coblenz to Labour Ministry, 5 December 1924.

23 The notion of a second trauma is used by late twentieth-century psychiatrists to describe the experience of trauma survivors, including victims of rape, incest and AIDS, who encounter rejection and stigmatization in their pre-trauma environments from groups that would ideally help facilitate healing. On Vietnam veterans who encounter secondary trauma through rejection from family and community, see Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam (New York 1994), 195—209. For an interesting study of survivors' experiences with cultural reactions to trauma, see Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy, `Truth, Trauma and Justice in Gilion Slovo's Every Secret Thing', Literature and Medicine, 19, 1 (Spring 2000), 115—32.

24 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36027. August Fischer letter to Labour Ministry, 26 October 1921.

25 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36027. Alex Elshoffer letter to Labour Ministry, 11 August 1921.

26 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36028. Karl Unger letter to the Reichsbund, Ortsgruppe Karlsruhe, copy sent to Labour Ministry, 18 October 1924.

27 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36028. Karl Unger letter to President von Hindenburg, 22 June 1926.

28 H. Hoffmann, `Psychologie und Kriegsopfer', Reichsbund — Organ des Reichsbundes der Kriegsbeschädigten, Kriegsteilnehmer und Kriegerhinterbliebenen, 1 July 1926.

29 On the social and psychological impact of the war on working-class women, see Ute Daniel, trans. Margaret Ries, The War from Within — German Working-Class Women in the First World War (Oxford 1997), 231—72; Ute Frevert, trans. Stuart McKinnon-Evans, Women in German History — From Bourgeois Liberation to Sexual Liberation (Oxford 1989), 149—204.

30 `Zwei feindliche Welten', Reichsbund, 1 May 1926.

31 Alma Hißfeld, `Stellungsnahme der Hinterbliebenen zum nationalen Trauertag', Reichsbund , 1 April 1921.

32 Martha Harnoß, `Zur Heilbehandlung der Kriegerhinterbliebenen', Reichsbund, 1 May 1926.

33 `Waisenrente nach dem 18. Lebensjahr', Reichsbund, no. 7, Juli 1926. Reichsbund leaders pushed legislation through the Reichstag that reflected their view that war neurosis was not limited to the combat front. The SPD took credit in 1924 for adding an amendment to the 1920 National Pension Law, paragraph 41, guaranteeing pensions to veterans' orphans over 18 who were still unable to take care of themselves due to mental or physical illness.

34 H. Hoffmann, `Psychologie und Kriegsopfer', Reichsbund, 1 July 1926. Hoffmann found psychoanalytic theory useful in understanding war neurosis. He employed terms like `repression' and `inferiority complex' to describe the myriad psychological problems that affected Reichsbund constituents beyond the trenches, and he alluded to the disruption of sexual relations between traumatized veterans and their wives as one factor leading to postwar neuroses.

35 Ibid.

36 `Im Dienst der Organization erwacht wieder das Bewußtsein eigener Leistungsfähigkeit', Reichsbund, 1 July 1926.

37 Whalen, op. cit., 157—8.

38 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36252. `Geisteskrankheiten und Dienstbeschädigungen' from Dr Scholze's Reichstag hearing of 2 December 1926.

39 Ibid.

40 See Ludwig Preller's Sozialpolitik in der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart 1949), 363—5. Preller argues that unemployment insurance legislation was the Social Democratic Party's priority during the 1925—27 period.

41 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 37011. `Einzelne Problemen'. Hauptversorgungsamt Brandenburg-Pommern letter to Labour Ministry, 5 March 1930.

42 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 37011. Drucklieb letter to Labour Ministry, 23 March 1932.

43 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 37011. Drucklieb letter to Labour Ministry, 9 June 1929.

44 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 37011. Drucklieb letter to Labour Ministry, 23 March 1932. A political chameleon, Drucklieb indicated in subsequent letters that Hitler's aim to make war-disabled the `first citizens' of the Third Reich was appealing, but carried no substance in terms of pension reform. This proved true, as war-disabled received a medal and a 60-mark single payment in 1934, but the 1920 National Pension Law was not significantly revised as promised. On first world war veterans in nazi Germany, see James M. Diehl, The Thanks of the Fatherland (Chapel Hill, NC 1993), 31—53.

45 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 37011. Drucklieb to Labour Ministry, 8 September 1930.

46 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 37011. Drucklieb to Labour Ministry, 21 July 1921.

47 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 37011. Drucklieb to Labour Ministry, 9 October 1931. This description of his psychological condition is quoted by Drucklieb himself, who began to sign his letters with self-mocking sarcasm: `Drucklieb, severely disabled, pensioner, and whiner'.

48 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 37011. His wife's status as unable to earn a living was summarized by Drucklieb in his 8 September 1930 letter. Her condition is not elaborated on in a letter from the Berlin pension office to the Labour Ministry when they were granted emergency assistance.

49 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36139. `Sammlungen in Auslände, Einzelfälle, Allgemeines.' Letter from Reichsbund to Labour Ministry, 28 January 1926. Labour Ministry letter dated 3 February 1926 confirms payment to Frau Bachmann.

50 Whalen, op. cit., 169—70. Quoted from Erich Rossmann, `Die Entwicklung der parlamentarischen Lage für die Kriegsopfer seit dem Hamburger Bundestag', Reichsbund, 25 May 1930.

51 `Die Liquidierung der inneren Kriegslasten', Reichsbund, 25 January 1930.

52 Ibid.

53 `Sparpsychose', Reichsbund, 25 February 1930.

54 `Kongreß der Werktätigen — Referat des Genossen Dr Klauber', Internationaler Bund — Organ der Kriegsbeschädigten, Kriegsteilnehmer und Kriegerhinterbliebenen (later changed to Organ des Internationalen Bundes der Opfer des Kriegs und der Arbeit), no. 3 (February 1927).

55 On the different constructions of the memory of the war, particularly the myth of the war experience as constructed by the right, see George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers — Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York 1990). Competing debates over the memory of the war among different social groups are examined by Richard Bessel, Germany after the First World War (Oxford 1993), 254—84. For a cultural history on mourning and the memory of the war, see Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning — The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge 1995).

56 `Der Wert der ärztlicher Gutachten', Internationaler Bund, no. 9 (September 1926).

57 `Kriegs-Hysterie', Internationaler Bund, no. 12 (December 1925).

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 `Renten Neurose', Internationaler Bund, no. 8 (August 1928).

61 Ibid.

62 `Geschäftsmann oder Arzt!', Internationaler Bund, no. 3 (March 1928).

63 BA Berlin. RAM. R3901/Film 36029, `Beschwerden.' Letter from the medical director at the Berlin main pension office (signature illegible) to the Labour Ministry, 19 November 1928.

64 Emil Vogeley, `Die Psychiatrie und Neurologie im Dienst der kapitalistischen Klasse', Internationaler Bund, no. 10 (October 1928).

65 Ibid.

66 Hans Schlottau, `Kriegsfurioso — Visionen eines Verwundeten.' Erste Flugschrift, Friedensbund der Kriegsteilnehmer und Friedensfreunde. Vorwort, Hermann Klamfoth (Hamburg 1920). The alleged insanity of doctors often appeared in anti-war literature. See, for example, Karl Kraus' Die letzten Tage der Menschheit, in which psychiatrists are portrayed as sado-masochists who enjoy administering electro-shock treatment to shirkers identified by insane officers.

67 BA Berlin. Reichspressearchiv. R8034/2326. `Der Fall Franzke-Rudolph vor dem Stadtparlament — Hinter den Kulissen der städtischen Kriegsbeschädigten-Fürsorge', Berliner Lokale Anzeiger, no. 423, 9 September 1921.

68 `Der Dank des Vaterlandes!' — Das Martyrium eines 100% Kriegsbeschädigten', Internationaler Bund, no. 3 (March 1932).

69 `Selbstmord', Internationaler Bund, no. 2 (February 1930).

War Neurosis versus Savings Psychosis: Working-class Politics and Psychological Trauma in Weimar Germany

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