Life’s memories by W. Schiebeler During the time after the Second World War, ergo the time that I consciously witnessed as an adult, the term “parapsychology” was equated with the name of Professor Hans Bender (1907 – 1991) in the broader community. Those that mentioned parapsychology meant Bender and vice versa. He was the one that tried to give parapsychology an academic standing in Germany. And so it came to pass that the opinion prevailed in the community that he occupied the only university professorship for parapsychology, but this was in no way correct. Who was this Hans Bender? He had studied psychology in Bonn and he promoted a PhD thesis titled “psychic automatism” there. He was an assistant at the Psychological Institute at the University of Bonn for a number of years and he dealt with peripheral phenomena of psychology and paranormal apparitions. He also studied medicine and he absolved the national medical examination in Freiburg during the summer of 1939. He later indicated that he had also written a dissertation titled “Die Arbeitskurve unter Pervitin” and during that time and to have absolved the verbal PhD exams under his PhD supervisor Professor Beringer. This was something that he could not verify later and it annoyed him considerably. After the conquest of France, a Reich University was founded in Strasbourg and an associated professorship for parapsychology and clinical parapsychology established there. Bender was put in charge of it. He held his first lecture during the summer semester in 1942 and he was supposed to teach faculty based psychology there. But he undertook some serious parapsychological studies after that. Bender at his desk in his institute.
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