HELLPACH, WILLY
Publié le 22/02/2012
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HELLPACH, WILLY (1877–1955), psychologist and politician; DDP candidate
for President in 1925. Born to a court official in the Lower Silesian town
of Oels (now Olesnica), he switched from medical studies to psychology and
earned a doctorate in 1899 under Leipzig's Wilhelm Wundt; he completed a
second doctorate in 1903 in medicine. He founded a neurological practice in
Karlsruhe and wrote his Habilitation in 1906 at the Technische Hochschule. His
academic career brought appointment in 1920 as head of the Institut fu¨r Sozialpsychologie
(Institute for Social Psychology). Hellpach's publications focused
on the domain separating medicine and psychology. During the war he
directed a hospital specializing in nervous disorders. Despite conservative proclivities,
he joined the DDP after the war and, as a persuasive and thoughtful
speaker, won a seat on the DDP's Hauptvorstand.
Although the DDP's politics often annoyed him, Hellpach became Baden's
Cultural Minister in 1922. His success at devising a model for professional
education was central to his selection in 1924 as Baden's Prime Minister. Although
he lacked a national profile, he was nonetheless asked by the DDP to
run for President in 1925; while he lost, he received 1.5 million votes. With a
severely wounded ego, Hellpach left politics and took a professorship in 1926
at Heidelberg. Although he was elected to the DDP's Reichstag* faction in 1928,
he was soon disillusioned with the partisanship that precluded forming a united
front from the middle parties. ‘‘After the empty and meaningless episode of two
years,'' as he later wrote, he renounced politics in March 1930. He was remotely
involved in Erich Koch-Weser's* efforts to unite with the Jungdo.*
There was a certain eccentricity in Hellpach's politics. An outspoken Lutheran,
he opposed the formation of concordats with Rome and earned the enmity
of many in the Center Party.* He also stood apart from the DDP by
favoring ties with Russia at the expense of Britain and France. But politics was
a secondary concern for him; by late 1930 he was completely absorbed by
academic work at Heidelberg.
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