Dr. Oskar Felix Kohnstamm (13 April 1871 in Pfungstadt

Pfungstadt

Pfungstadt is a German town of 25,117 inhabitants, in the district of Darmstadt-Dieburg in the state of Hesse.The town was first mentioned in 785 as property of the Monastery of Lorsch and got its town rights in 1886 due to its railway station...

 - 6 November 1917 in Frankfurt am Main) was a German neurologist

Neurologist

A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...

 and psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

. Initially trained in internal medicine in Giessen and Strassbourg he received his doctors degree in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 in 1894. Kohnstamm then began as a general practitioner in Königstein im Taunus

Königstein im Taunus

Königstein im Taunus is a climatic spa and lies on the thickly wooded slopes of the Taunus in Hesse, Germany. Owing to its advantageous location for both scenery and transport on the edge of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region, Königstein is a favourite residential town...

 , a small town in Hesse

Hesse

Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...

. There, he became more and more interested in neurology

Neurology

Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...

 and psychiatry

Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...

.

His wife, Eva, daughter of Johannes Gad

Johannes Gad

Johannes Wilhelm Gad was a German neurophysiologist who was a native of Posen.He was an assistant to Emil du Bois-Reymond at the physiological institute at the University of Berlin, and later worked under Adolf Fick at the University of Würzburg...

 - one of Kohnstamm's Berlin professors, agreed to have occasionally depressive patients as guests in the house, who then got chores assigned in housekeeping, gardening or minding the children. Gradually, the idea ripened to build a small sanatorium

Sanatorium

A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...

 for treating clinical depression

Clinical depression

Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...

s. The house, build in Jugendstil style, opened in 1905 and was expanded in 1912.
Kohnstamm was no follower of Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

 but worked often with hypnosis

Hypnosis

Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...

.

Among his patients were three young men who would become world-famous: the painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th century art. He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a...

 (1880-1938), the actor Alexander Moissi (1879-1935) and the conductor Otto Klemperer

Otto Klemperer

Otto Klemperer was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century.-Biography:Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany...

 (1885-1973).

Even the playwright Carl Sternheim

Carl Sternheim

Carl Sternheim was a German playwright and short story writer. One of the major exponents of German Expressionism, he especially satirized the moral sensibilities of the emerging German middle class during the Wilhelmine period.-Biography:Born in Leipzig to a Jewish banker and his Protestant wife...

 (1878 – 1942) has been in medical treatment in Kohnstamms sanatorium during the First World War. The poets Stefan George

Stefan George

Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,...

, Karl Wolfskehl

Karl Wolfskehl

Karl Wolfskehl was a German Jewish author who wrote poetry, prose and drama in German. He also translated from French, English, Italian, Hebrew, Latin and Middle High German into German....

, the archaeologist Botho Graef

Botho Graef

Franz Botho Graef was a German classical archaeologist and art historian. His father was painter Gustav Graef, and his sister, Sabine Lepsius, was also an artist of some note. Graef taught at the University of Jena from 1904 until 1917.-Writings:* Hodlers und Hofmanns Wandbilder in der...

 and the architect Henry van de Velde

Henry van de Velde

Henry Clemens Van de Velde was a Belgian Flemish painter, architect and interior designer. Together with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar he could be considered one of the main founders and representatives of Art Nouveau in Belgium...

have been friends of him.