Gustav Aschaffenburg (1866–1944) und die Einführung der verminderten Zurechnungsfähigkeit

The debate on diminished responsibility is very old. Within psychiatry the dilemma was that a transition concept between illness and health could not be correlated with a polarization of diminished responsibility and sanity. Despite being known in the criminal laws of individual states, the term of diminished responsibility was not included in § 51 in the Criminal Law of the German Reich (RStGB) passed in 1871. In the discussion on a reform of the criminal law at the beginning of the twentieth century, Gustav Aschaffenburg, professor of psychiatry in Cologne, played a prominent role among the advocates of introducing the notion of diminished responsibility into the new RStGB. His intensive scientific and journalistic commitment to this topic and to the question of introducing measures for the prevention of crime and reformation of offenders significantly contributed to the fact that in 1933 both the term of diminished responsibility and the measures were incorporated into the criminal law still in force today. This article is intended to highlight Aschaffenburg’s importance for the reform of the criminal law and the development of forensic psychiatry in Germany.