Karl Kleist

Karl Kleist (born 31 January 1879 in Mulhouse, Alsace, died 26 December 1960) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who made notable advances in descriptive psychopathology and neuropsychology.

The work is based on several hundred cases of shot wounded patients of World War I, whose functional deficits Kleist deliberately studied and described in detail during their lifetime.

He was employed as an assistant at the Neuropsychiatric Clinic, Halle University 1905–1908, thus working under Theodor Ziehen, Carl Wernicke and Gabriel Anton.

[3] Several staff members of his Neuropsychiatric Clinic were critical of national socialism, notably his students Neele and Leonhard, and they avoided using diagnoses, such as schizophrenia, that would endanger patients under the euthanasia program.

[8] As director of the Frankfurt University Neuropsychiatric Clinic, his statutory duties also included the inspection of the mental asylums of Hesse-Nassau and the Rheingau.

After the national socialists came into power, he was prevented from carrying out these duties for four years, until being allowed to perform an inspection in 1938 after offering his resignation.

He had many collaborators, among whom Karl Leonhard is notable for his genetic (at that time mainly family history) studies on groups of patients classified by Kleist.