Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

When Emil Kraepelin died (15. 02. 1856-07. 10. 1926), he left behind his memoirs, which were not published until today. Co-workers and col leagues from the last years of Kraepelin's life and his family knew that such an autobiography existed, but they were not sure whether these memoirs should be made public, so they remained unpublished. At a commemoration 50 years after Emil Kraepelin's death in Mu nich (1976) the descendants, who attended the festivities, agreed to the editors' suggestion to publish the "Memoirs". Through this publication we have been able to learn more about the life of a man, whose work has had a decisive and lasting effect on the entire psychiatry since the end of the last century. When one reads the memoirs, one has to admit that on ly very little is known about this great psychiatrist's personality and path through life and that this gap has by no means been filled by the publica tion of his memoirs. Perhaps this publication will encourage work on a biography, which will give us more information on Kraepelin's person ality, life and scientific work. The focal-point of Kraepelin's work lies in the classification of psy chiatric clinical syndromes, which was developed from clinical observa tions, was constantly tested empirically and was altered taking new findings and knowledge into account. However, the basis of this system has remained unchanged and valid until today.

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfangen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen fur die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfugung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden mussen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben.