[Wilhelm Griesingers "Magna Charta" of psychiatry. Its reception and impact on modern psychiatry].

The work of Wilhelm Griesinger, really a magna charta of psychiatry, is usually reduced to just one sentence: "Geisteskrankheiten sind Gehirnkrankheiten", roughly: "mental illnesses are brain disorders". However, this is neither explicitly stated in Griesingers work nor does it adequately summarise his conception. This misinterpretation will be questioned by a careful analysis of the literature, and, in addition to that, the dimensions of Griesingers psychiatry including its delayed impact on the development of modern psychiatry will be described.