Why Medicine and Art belong together

This was the theme of a lecture given by Prof. Dr Karl-Josef Kuschel, theologian, literary scholar, and President of the International Hesse Society, on the occasion of an invitation to the Josephinum, followed by a concert of Franz Schubert’s song cycle “Die Winterreise”. Schubert had once received medical treatment in a hospital located in the immediate vicinity of the Josephinum.

In 1827, the gravely ill and lonely Schubert worked on setting Wilhelm Müller’s cycle of poems to music as the song cycle “Die Winterreise”. Having contracted syphilis in 1822—a diagnosis that at the time equated to a death sentence—Schubert expressed his suffering with remarkable intensity through this composition, creating a profound sense of the connection between music and medicine.

Illness is often experienced as a rupture in everyday life, tearing people out of their “normal” existence. Works of literature or music can help to overcome what paralyses us, or to give voice to what seems unspeakable.

“As Kuschel put it, ‘It is precisely through the sensory perception of the art of sound that opportunities for reflection beyond the banal and the everyday can be experienced. Experiences of interruption become possible.’ For him personally, these are experiences of transcending—of moving beyond one’s own often narrow and limited horizon.”