The Politics of Interdictive Jurisprudence: Interrogative Practices and Psychological Evaluations (Gemütszustandsuntersuchungen) in the Adjudication of Civil Interdiction Cases before Berlin’s District Courts (1877–1914)

The article investigates the psychological evaluations (so-called Gemütszustandsuntersuchungen ) that were used in legal interdiction proceedings at Berlin’s district courts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The evaluations were undertaken in order to help judges decide whether or not individuals—usually, but not always feeble-minded or mentally ill ones—should be placed under legal guardianship. The following themes are addressed: the evolving procedural statutes that governed the exercise of judicial discretion and the presentation of scientific evidence; the collaborative interaction of judges and forensic experts during the interrogations; the instability of written transcripts and recourse to bodily and behavioral attributes in the face of interrogative failure; and the heated political exchanges about the psy-disciplines and their role in the abrogation or abridgment of citizens’ rights in Wilhelmine Berlin. The article will first survey the specific statutory context that framed guardianship cases in Berlin’s district court ( Amtsgericht ). It will then summarize contemporary debates about reforms to procedural law and the administrative adjudication of those cases. Against this backdrop, the analysis will then turn to an examination of court transcripts of the interrogations in order to assess the practice and often contested standing of psy-experts in the courtrooms of Wilhelmine Berlin.