Prinzhorn Collection Prinzhorn Collection

The Prinzhorn Collection brings together art created by people with exceptional psychological experiences in psychiatric institutions in the German-speaking world and beyond.

The well-known historical holdings of the Prinzhorn Collection comprise around 8,000 drawings, watercolours, paintings, sculptures, textiles and texts created by patients of psychiatric institutions between 1840 and 1945. This unique body of material was assembled chiefly by Hans Prinzhorn (1886–1933) during his time as an assistant physician at the Psychiatric Clinic of Heidelberg University.

Together with the then head of the clinic, Karl Wilmanns, Prinzhorn sent letters to psychiatric institutions between 1919 and 1921 requesting artistic works by patients. On this basis, Prinzhorn published the study “Artistry of the Mentally Ill,” which attracted particular attention in artistic circles. Misused during the Nazi period as “pathological comparative material” and subsequently forgotten, the collection was rediscovered in 1963 by Harald Szeemann. National and international exhibitions followed, bringing the collection back into the public eye.

Since the 1980s, the collection has been growing again through art by people with experience of psychiatry. Today it comprises 40,000 works and, since 2001, has been housed in a converted lecture hall on the site of the old university hospital. Through thematic exhibitions, the museum aims to contribute to the destigmatisation of mental illness and to the inclusion of those affected.