On the Trail of the Morning Star: Psychosis as Self-Discovery

Imprint:

Published: 05/15/2024

In 1936, at age nineteen, Dorothea Buck followed the trail of a star along the mudflats of her North Sea home, Wangerooge Island in Germany. Hospitalized at a Christian institution called Bethel, she was sterilized under Nazi law upon a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Buck lost her lifelong dream of becoming a teacher—the sterilized could not[…]