25-12-1911: Suicide attempts. From then on she spent the rest of her life in mental institutions in Austria and Germany (with one brief period of an exception). She suffered from dementia praecox: Dementia praecox (a "premature dementia" or "precocious madness"). A chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration, usually beginning in the late teens or early adulthood. The term was first used in 1891 by Arnold Pick (1851-1924), a professor of psychiatry at Charles University in Prague. His brief clinical report described the case of a person with a psychotic disorder resembling hebephrenia. German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) popularised it in his first detailed textbook descriptions of a condition that eventually became a different disease concept and relabeled as schizophrenia. Kraepelin reduced the complex psychiatric taxonomies of the nineteenth century by dividing them into two classes: manic-depressive psychosis and dementia praecox. This division, commonly referred to as the Kraepelinian dichotomy, had a fundamental impact on twentieth-century psychiatry, though it has also been questioned. The primary disturbance in dementia praecox is a disruption in cognitive or mental functioning in attention, memory, and goal-directed behaviour. Kraepelin contrasted this with manic-depressive psychosis, now termed bipolar disorder, and also with other forms of mood disorder, including major depressive disorder. He eventually concluded that it was not possible to distinguish his categories on the basis of cross-sectional symptoms.
00-00-1917 Divorce.
04-12-1942 Dresden: Grete was killed by the Nazis because of her mental illness. Alma Mahler (1879-1964) is not impressed by the fate of her younger half-sister. In Alma Mahler-Werfel's autobiography My Life she described her as a "dependent younger sister".
1898-1946 Correspondence to Alma Mahler: Two items from Gretl were inserted by Alma between the pages of her diary: a postcard, at the entry for 12. Oct. 1898 (Suite 8), and a letter at the entry for 27. Sept. 1900 (Suite 19); see Tagebuchsuiten ed. Beaumont and Rode-Breymann. A undated item from Gretl to Wilhelm Legler (1875-1951) and Wilhelm (Willy) Carl Emil Legler (1902-1960) was written while she was institutionalized and bears a drawing by her. The item from Legler to Alma, dated 1946, reports some news about Alma's family members from the war period.
