Hellpach, Willy

(1877-1955)

   psychologist and politician; DDP candi-date for President in 1925. Born to a court official in the Lower Silesian town of Oels (now Olesnica), he switched from medical studies to psychology and earned a doctorate in 1899 under Leipzig's Wilhelm Wundt; he completed a second doctorate in 1903 in medicine. He founded a neurological practice in Karlsruhe and wrote his Habilitation in 1906 at the Technische Hochschule. His academic career brought appointment in 1920 as head of the Institut fur So-zialpsychologie (Institute for Social Psychology). Hellpach's publications fo-cused on the domain separating medicine and psychology. During the war he directed a hospital specializing in nervous disorders. Despite conservative pro-clivities, he joined the DDP after the war and, as a persuasive and thoughtful speaker, won a seat on the DDP's Hauptvorstand.

   Although the DDP's politics often annoyed him, Hellpach became Baden's Cultural Minister in 1922. His success at devising a model for professional education was central to his selection in 1924 as Baden's Prime Minister. Al-though he lacked a national profile, he was nonetheless asked by the DDP to run for President in 1925; while he lost, he received 1.5 million votes. With a severely wounded ego, Hellpach left politics and took a professorship in 1926 at Heidelberg. Although he was elected to the DDP's Reichstag* faction in 1928, he was soon disillusioned with the partisanship that precluded forming a united front from the middle parties. "After the empty and meaningless episode of two years," as he later wrote, he renounced politics in March 1930. He was remotely involved in Erich Koch-Weser's* efforts to unite with the Jungdo*

   There was a certain eccentricity in Hellpach's politics. An outspoken Lu-theran, he opposed the formation of concordats with Rome and earned the en-mity of many in the Center Party.* He also stood apart from the DDP by favoring ties with Russia at the expense of Britain and France. But politics was a secondary concern for him; by late 1930 he was completely absorbed by academic work at Heidelberg.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Frye, Liberal Democrats; Larry Jones, German Liberalism; NDB, vol. 8.