Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Part 1

Directed by Ernst Schmidt Jr.

On the 28th of October 1884 Daniel Paul Schreber, candidate of the National Liberal Party in Chemnitz, suffered a heavy defeat at the elections of the German Reichstag. He was taken up in the mental clinic of the Leipzig University soon afterwards. To his rehabilition he wrote an extensive piece of work, "Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken" (Memoirs of My Nervous Illness), which was published in 1903 and led to his temporary dismissal. Hereby Schreber became the most quoted psychiatric patient in scientific literature. This first part of the project, originally conceived as a long feature film, was finished while Ernst Schmidt Jr. was still alive.