Arthur Kronfeld

Arthur Kronfeld (1886 to 1941) was a German psychiatrist of Jewish origin who became a professor at the University of Berlin. Forced into exile, he later took an important position in Moscow, where on 10 October 1936 an exchange between him and fellow exiled German-Jewish psychiatrist James Lewin was recorded in the proceedings of the Moscow Society of Neuropathology and Psychiatry. His sister Maria Dronke found fame as an actor in New Zealand. In 1941 he wrote the pamphlet Degenerates in Power, in which he made psychiatric diagnoses of Hitler and his associates, and he took part in anti-fascist programmes on Moscow radio. He is believed to have died by suicide together with his wife at the approach of German troops in October 1941, although the exact manner of their deaths is disputed. His career shows how psychiatry was drawn into exile and political conflict in the twentieth century.