Franz Pohl (1868–1940)[1] was the pseudonym of Franz Karl Bühler, a schizophrenic outsider artist and one of the "schizophrenic masters" profiled by Hans Prinzhorn in his field-defining work Artistry of the Mentally Ill. Bühler was a metalsmith by trade until 1898.
[1] In that year he was committed to a mental institution after being pulled on a cold winter day from a canal in Hamburg, into which he had jumped to escape imaginary pursuers.
As he "receded into an autistic existence", he produced a large number of drawings and writings.
[3] Bühler's work was especially appealing to Prinzhorn for its Expressionist character.
[1] In 1940, Bühler was killed during the first Nazi mass-murder programme, Aktion T4, targeting the mentally ill.[2] He was murdered in "a specially adapted home for disabled people at Grafeneck castle, in Swabia.