With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Widow of German actor Klaus Kinski sues lunatic asylum

The widow of German actor Klaus Kinski has launched legal proceedings against a former lunatic asylum in Berlin which released records claiming the famously eccentric performer was a "psychopath".

Minhaoi Loanic, who was Kinski's third wife before he died in 1991 aged 65, has begun the case after the Karl Bonhoeffer Nerve Clinic in Berlin released archive files from 1880 to 1960.

The documents are now part of the Berlin state archives, against which Loanic is also taking legal action.

Historians were expected to examine the files, from a clinic previously known as the State Insane and Idiot Asylum of Dalldorf, for details of Nazi euthanasia policies against the mentally ill.

Instead, it was the September 5th, 1950 file of the man born Klaus Nakschinski which quickly hit the headlines.

Under photographs taken from his particularly tempestuous 1971 one man show, in which he took the part of a ranting, abusive Jesus, newspapers published Kinksi's mental health records of almost 60 years ago.

One paper reported the file's first page: "Preliminary diagnosis: Schizophrenia," it apparently reads. "Conclusion: Psychopathy."

Kinski, who was 26 at the time of his three-day internment at the clinic, apparently twice attempted suicide after his feelings for a woman almost twice his age went unreciprocated.
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)