Abstract
Before the First World War in Cisleithania, an elaborate web of lunatic asylums existed that was able to provide professional care to the majority of the population. During the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, psychology had grown to an independent and developing science and mental illnesses were already perceived as real and curable diseases.
At the beginning of the First World War, some of the lunatic asylums were reserved for military personnel who got sick from mental illness. In these buildings, a selected professional staff worked, and effort was given to try to heal military personnel there.
This paper focuses on differences between everyday life in lunatic asylums for military personnel before and during the First World War. Standards that were made for mentally ill civilians according to their ability to pay were adapted for military personnel according to their military rank.
Further, this paper deals with the connection between lunatic asylums and what would happen to patients if one of the lunatic asylums got behind the enemy line. For example, a lunatic asylum in Pergine in Tyrol was evacuated during the First World War.
Its patients were equally, according to capacities of individual institutes, split between asylums in the Habsburg monarchy. Lastly, the paper presents several of the most interesting examples of diagnoses that were detected in military personnel.
This paper analyses documents from the lunatics asylums in Cisleithania (Zemský ústav pro choromyslné v Kosmonosech, Salzburger Landes-Irrenanstalt), letters from Ministry of War (k.u.k. Kriegsministerium) and data contained in professional articles by psychologists from the period and other nowadays professional literature about the topic.
The analysis concludes with answers to the points that were asked above. Ultimately, this paper aims to contribute to the presentation of more information about a not very frequent topic.