Sammlung Prinzhorn (Prinzhorn Collection), Heidelberg

The Prinzhorn Collection is a museum devoted to art created by people who experienced mental illness and psychiatric treatment. Its historical core contains about 6,000 works made between 1840 and 1940, including drawings, watercolours, paintings, sculptures, textiles and handwritten texts. The museum presents them as individual artistic expressions rather than simply as medical records.

The collection developed mainly between 1919 and 1921, when psychiatrist and art historian Hans Prinzhorn gathered works from psychiatric institutions across German-speaking Europe. His influential 1922 book, Artistry of the Mentally Ill, attracted the attention of Surrealists and other modern artists. Works by Else Blankenhorn, Emma Hauck and August Natterer include drawings, letters, textiles and imagined worlds.

The collection has a difficult history: the Nazi “Degenerate Art” exhibition opened in 1937, and works from the collection joined its tour in 1938. The museum opened in 2001 in a converted neurological lecture hall. Permanent and temporary displays examine art, psychiatry and social exclusion, drawing on the historical core and about 32,000 modern works.