German, Austrian and American Connections in Speech-Language Pathology

1850-1950

Name

Location of education/work affiliation

Selected Contributions


Alfred Adler 1870-1937


Vienna

USA 

Adler was a psychoanalyst who developed his own school of thought, called Individual Psychology, a school that was adopted by some for use in the field of speech pathology.  His followers in speech pathology included Emil Froeschels, Leopold Stein, Karl Cornelius Rothe and Alfred Appelt.

Alfred Appelt 1869-

Munich

Appelt, along with Emil Froeschels, Leopold Stein and Karl Cornelius Rothe applied Adler’s Individual Psychology philosophy to stuttering therapy.

Gottfried Arnold 1914-1989

Vienna, Berlin 

US 1949

Arnold was a specialist in voice and co-author with Richard Luchsinger of a popular text in the field: Voice, Speech, Language. He was a student of Herman Gutzmann, Jr.

Bruno Bettelheim 1903-1990

Vienna 

US 1939

Bruno Bettelheim applied Freud’s psychoanalytic theory to autism: He argued that "refrigerator mothers" caused autism. He served as the director a residential school for children with severe emotional disturbances in Chicago, ILL and wrote popular books about his practices.  

Smiley Blanton 1882-1966

An American analyzed by Freud in Berlin and Vienna. He also trained in

London

Blanton was a psychiatrist and the director of the University of Wisconsin Speech and Mental Hygiene Clinic and a child guidance clinic in Minneapolis, MN. He authored a number of publications on various aspects of speech correction, including stuttering and voice and speech problems of preschool children.

Frederick S. Brodnitz 1899-1995

Berlin 

US 1937

Brodnitz was a well known voice scientist. He had a private practice and worked with opera singers in New York City.

Karl Ludwig Buhler 1879-1963

 Vienna, 

 US 1938

Buher was a gestalt psychologist who contributed to American thinking about child language, thought and perception.

Charlotte Buhler 1893-1974

Vienna, Munich, Berlin US 1940     

Buhler was a specialist in child development, known for her diary studies and for her founding of humanistic psychology.

Raphael Coen

1839-1904

Vienna

Coen was a physician, specializing in speech disorders of children. He coined the term "audimute" for children who did not speak before 3 years. He identified various speech disorders in addition to audimute and developed elaborate therapy regimens including a 70 week-long program of daily lessons to remedy audimutism and a program of exercise, electro-therapy and elocution to remedy stammering.

Marc Colombat 1797-1851

Paris

Colombat’s specialities were stuttering and voice.  He played a pivotal role in the creation of speech pathology in France.  

Katrina de Hirsch 1903-1996

Frankfort, London 

US 1941

Katrina de Hirsch specialized in language disorders and learning disabilities. She was among the first to associate early language disorders with later reading disabilities. She was a protege of Samuel Orton.

Johann Frederick Dieffenbach 1795-1847

Berlin

Dieffenbach was a surgeon who became famous in the speech-language pathology profession because of the surgery he did on the tongue to cure stammering (stuttering). His aim was to eliminate the muscle spasm of the glottis which he thought caused stammering. Dieffenbach also developed methods for cleft palate surgery.

Theodor Simon Flatau 1860-1937

Berlin

Flatau was an otolaryngologist whose specialty was the singing and speaking voice. He established concepts of "phonasthenia" (vocal fatigue) and “dysodia" (change in the singing voice).  He was a student of Hermann Gutzmann Sr.

Esti Freud 1896-1980

Vienna, Paris, Casablanca US 1942

Esti Freud’s specialty was voice disorders. She was a student of Emil Froeschels and wrote a memoir describing Froeschels’ curriculum in speech disorders. 

Sigmund Freud 1856-1939

Vienna London 1938

This renown psychoanalyst wrote a book on aphasia that argued against a strict localizationist theory in the brain as an account for aphasia. His theories have also been applied to explain the causes of stuttering.

Henry Freund 1896-1982

Vienna        US 

Freund’s specialties were stuttering and cluttering.  He portrayed stuttering as an “expectancy neurosis”.  He was the director of speech clinics in Europe and served as chief of the VA Hygiene Clinic in Milwaukee in the US.

Emil Froeschels 1885-1972

Vienna  

US 1938

This influential speech-language therapist was a well published Austrian "speech doctor" in Austria who came to America in 1938. He began International organization of logopedics and phoniatrics (IALP) and the German Society of Speech-, Language-, and Voice-Pathology. He invented the once acclaimed "chewing method" of therapy. 

Robert Froriep 1804-1861

Berlin

Frioriep was a physician and director of the Pathological Museum at the Charite in Berlin. He treated stuttering by surgery (dividing the genio-hyoglossus on one side of the body). He also used electrical therapy to work with stuttering.

Franz Joseph Gall 1758-1828

Vienna

Gall was a neuroanatomist, known for his advancement of faculty psychology and for his ideas about phrenology, where mental faculties were thought to be manifest separately on the surface of the brain.  He was among the first to identify childhood language disorders—what he called audimutism.

Kurt Goldstein 1878-1965

Frankfurt, 

Berlin    

US 1934

Goldstein contributed holistic notions to the study of the brain and aphasia including "abstract attitude.” He was a student and intellectual adversary of Carl Wernicke.

Max Goldstein 1870-1941

St. Louis, Vienna 

Max Goldstein, an American otologist, specialized in methods to enhance hearing in the deaf and hearing impaired.  He studied with Urbantschitsch in Vienna and applied his interest in Urbantschitsch’s auditory training approach when creating a curriculum for children who are deaf enrolled in the Central Institute for the Deaf  that Goldstein founded in  St. Louis in 1914.  

James Sonnett Greene 1880-1950

American, trained in Berlin

Greene was the founder and director of Hospital for Speech Defects in New York City.  

Oskar Guttmann

Berlin

US  

Guttmann’s book on vocal gymnastics, written in 1859 and translated into English in 1882 is still cited.  His vocal exercises were designed as therapy for voice disorders and stuttering. 

Albert Gutzmann 1837-1910

Berlin

Albert Gutzmann was a teacher of the deaf and director of a Berlin school for the deaf. He developed a regimen for treating stuttering in school children (breathing and articulation exercises) (1887) and instructed teachers of the deaf. His son and grandson became well known "speech doctors" in Germany/

Hermann Gutzmann Sr. 1865-1922

Berlin

Son of Albert, Hermann Sr was the founder of a medical movement in Berlin for physicians to specialize in speech and language disorders. He is called the father of phoniatrics in Europe.

Hermann Gutzmann Jr. 1892-1972

Berlin

Son of Hermann Sr., grandson of Albert:  Hermann Jr. became head of the medical clinic for voice and speech/language disabled, carrying out the tradition of his father.


Granville Stanley Hall

1844-1924


American who studied in Berlin, Leipzig and Munich

Hall was American who studied with Wundt in Liepzig and was influenced by the work of Preyer.  He is said to have founded the child study movement in the US.  

Herman von Helmholtz 1821-1894

Berlin

Helmholtz was a physician, physicist, and mathematician. He blamed stuttering on a spasm of the glottis and advocated physical relaxation and immobility of the body as therapy.

Augusta Jellinek 1901-1957


Rome   Vienna 

US, 1938

Jellinek was an opera singer and hearing and voice researcher. She was a researcher in Rome between 1933 and 1938. She left that position because of anti semitic laws in Mussolini's Italy. Jellinek emigrated to America in 1938 and worked with Max Goldstein in St. Louis. She then moved to New York City, and worked with Emil Froeschels there and published with him. 

Shulamith Kastein 1903-1983

Vienna

US 1940

Kastein, an immigrant from Vienna, Austria, was a specialist in language of the blind child.  She worked in the Froeschels clinic in NYC and published with him.  

Elmer Kenyon 1865-1945

American who studied in 

Berlin 1911-12


Kenyon was an otolaryngologist who studied with H. Gutzmann Sr. in Germany. He established a speech and hearing clinic at Rush Medical College in Chicago in 1910. Kenyon was one of the charter members of ASHA.  

Hermann Klencke 1813-1881

Leipzig

Klenke was a “speech doctor” who described symptoms for cluttering (1842) He was the first to formally to suggest that effective speech correction must deal with the total speech problem, including the psychological as well as the physical (1862). He opened a sanatorium for stammerers and used speech gymnastics (breathing and voicing practice) as his primary therapy method. The average stay at his sanatorium was 20-25 weeks.

Emil Kraepelin 1856-1926

Munich

Kraepelin has been called the father of modern psychiatry. He was the first to identify schizophrenia and manic-depression, and he pioneered the use of drugs to treat mental illness. He was a joint discoverer of Alzeimer's disease, which he named after his collaborator. 

Adolf Kussmaul 1822-1902

Heidelberg, Erlangen, Freiberg

Kussmaul published a classic book "disturbances of speech" in 1877 in which he made an extensive study of the physiological origins of speech disorders, especially stuttering and aphasia.

Ludwig Lichtheim

1845-1928

Moved around: Breslau, Berlin

Lichtheim was one of the "diagram makers" who supported the localization theory of the brain. He identified brain centers and theorized that their disconnections, caused by brain damage, produced different types of aphasia. He also claimed that when a person can indicate the number of syllables in a word, but cannot say the word, it it is a sign that he has subcortical motor aphasia.

Albert Liebmann

 1876-1942


Berlin

Liebmann was a medical educator specializing in the speech and language problems of children. He wrote the first book on cluttering.  

Richard Luchsinger 1900-1993

Swiss, but studied in Munich for a while.

Luchsinger was a phoniatrist and ENT who studied with Nadoleczny in Munich. He set up an ENT and Speech Clinic in Zurich (1936). He was among those who founded the journal Folia Phoniatrica and published a well known book on voice, speech, and language with Gottfried Arnold in 1949 (in German).  

Carl Ludwig Merkel 1812-1876

Leipzig

Merkel, a physician, published a classic book on phonetics in 1866. He saw stuttering as a problem with the "adynamic" state of the organs associated with a problem of volition. His treatment involved raising the body tone, lessening the force of the articulators, and strengthening energy of respiratory muscles.

Johannes Peter Mueller 1801-1858

Bonn

Mueller was a physiologist who studied the anatomy of the larynx. He theorized that stuttering originated in the glottis. He recommended omitting "explosive sounds" in reading exercises to keep the glottis open.

Max Nadoleczny 1874-1940

Berlin, then Munich

Nadoleczny was a physician and student of Hermann Gutzmann Sr. He worked in Munich for forty years. He organized free courses for children with speech and language disabilities. He published 125 articles and was a founder of the German Society of Speech-, Language-, and Voice-Pathology.  He also served as an associate editor of the Journal of Speech Disorders when it began in 1936.  

Heinrich Neumann

Vienna

Neumann was an otolaryngologist who ran an ENT clinic at Vienna University.  The Neumann clinic was later converted into a speech and hearing clinic by Emil Froeschels.  

Arnold Pick 1851-1924

Vienna

Berlin

Prague

Pick, a physician and student of Wernicke’s, distinguished several clinical forms of aphasia.

Adam Politzer 1893-1894


Vienna

Politzer, founded the Clinic for Otology of the University of Vienna, the first clinic of its kind in the world. His students were Max Goldstein, Emil Froeschels

William Preyer 1841-1897

Bonn

Jenaz

Preyer was a founder of scientific developmental psychology and an early researcher in childhood language acquisition.  His work was frequently quoted by Froeschels in the 1918 book on Child language and  aphasia, he also influenced G. Stanley Hall. 

G. Oscar Russell 1890-1962

American who studied in Berlin and Vienna 

Russell was a phonetician and speech scientist.  He was the first editor of the Journal of Speech Disorders and in the journal acknowledged the important role of European phoniatrists by placing them on the editorial board and publishing their work.

Edward Wheeler Scripture 1864-1945

American who studied in Berlin, Leipzig and

Munich.


Scripture was an early researcher in experimental phonetics in the US.  He, along with his wife, May Kirk Scripture founded and directed a speech clinic at Columbia University. He studied with H. Gutzmann in Berlin and W. Wundt in Liepzig. Later in life he moved to London and founded a speech clinic at the West End Hospital for Nervous Diseases.  

Miloslav Seeman 1892-1975

Prague

Vienna

Seeman was an otolaryngologist, who specialized in education of the hearing impaired.  He was active in IALP—an international organization of Europeans (at first) specializing in logopedics and phoniatrics.  

Leopold Stein 1893-1969


Vienna

London

Stein worked with Froeschels and Seeman to bring psychoanalytic theory into the realm and practice of speech pathology.  

William Stern, 1871-1938

Clara Stern 1887-1945

Berlin, Breslau, Hamburg

US 1933

William Stern created the concepts of Mental Age and Intelligence Quotient. He and wife and research partner, Clara Stern, studied children's development, using their own children as a point of departure.

Alfred A. Strauss 1897-1957

Heidelberg

Strauss was one of the earliest practitioners and writers about learning disabilities in children, which he considered to be "minimal brain damage."

Leopold Treitel

1865-1905

Berlin

Treitel was an ENT who used developmental theory to understand children with speech/language disabilities.  He was among those, called “speech doctors” who promoted speech pathology as a medical specialty.

Viktor Urbantschitsch 1847-1921

Vienna

Urbantschitsch was an otologist who developed a method of auditory training for the deaf. He was a mentor to Max Goldstein who went on to start the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis, in the US. 

Deso Weiss 1901-1971

Vienna

US 1947 via Havana, Cuba

Weiss is best known for is work on cluttering. He also specialized in voice disorders.  Weiss was a close affiliate and former student of Emil Froeschels. 

Egon Weigl 1901-1979

Munich, Frankfort, Berlin

Weigl was a neuropsychologist and aphasiologist, who promoted idea of “inner speech”, recommended deblocking as an aphasia therapy, and studied the neurolinguistics of written language. 

Heinz Werner 1890-1964

Vienna Hamburg

US 1933

Werner’s specialty was in child development. He created the organismic theory of development that talked about body involvement in language acquisition. He studied the cognition and perception of children with retardation.

Carl Wernicke 1848-1905

Breslau then Berlin

Wernike is best known to speech-language pathologists for his study of aphasia and for his discovery of the area in the cerebrum responsible for receptive language/speech phenomena in the superior gyrus of the temporal lobe (Wernike’s aphasia.) 

Wilhelm Wundt 1832-1920

Leipzig

Wundt was a founder of experimental psychology. He directed the dissertation of Edward Wheeler Scripture who is said to be the first American speech scientist..

Gertrud Wyatt 1903-1993

Vienna

US 1939

Wyatt was an early specialist in mother-child interaction, especially as it related to the onset of stuttering and stuttering therapies