Friedrich Salomon Rothschild (December 17, 1899,

Giessen Giessen, spelled Gießen in German (), is a town in the German state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of both the district of Giessen and the administrative region of Giessen. The population is approximately 90,000, with roughly 37,000 univers ...

– March 6, 1995,

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

) was a

German-Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...

and

semiotician Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves Sign (semiotics), signs, where a sign is defined as anything that commun ...

. He has coined the term

biosemiotic Biosemiotics (from the Greek βίος ''bios'', "life" and σημειωτικός ''sēmeiōtikos'', "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, p ...

in his work of 1962. He worked in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

(from 1925 to 1928) with psychotherapist

Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Frieda Fromm-Reichmann ( Reichmann; October 23, 1889 in Karlsruhe, Germany – April 28, 1957 in Rockville, Maryland) was a German psychiatrist and contemporary of Sigmund Freud who immigrated to America during World War II. She was a pioneer for ...

(1889–1957) and psychoanalyst

Erich Fromm Erich Seligmann Fromm (; ; March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the U ...

(1900–1980), and in Frankfurt (from 1928 to 1933) with

Kurt Goldstein Kurt Goldstein (November 6, 1878 – September 19, 1965) was a German neurologist and psychiatrist who created a holistic theory of the organism. Educated in medicine, Goldstein studied under Carl Wernicke and Ludwig Edinger where he focused on n ...

(1878–1965). He was influenced by the philosophy of

Ludwig Klages Friedrich Konrad Eduard Wilhelm Ludwig Klages (10 December 1872 – 29 July 1956) was a German philosopher, psychologist, graphologist, poet, writer, and lecturer, who was a two-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In the Germanospher ...

(1872–1956) with whom he corresponded. Kull K. 1999. On the history of joining bio with semio: F. S. Rothschild and the biosemiotic rules. ''

Sign Systems Studies ''Sign Systems Studies'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal on semiotics edited at the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu and published by the University of Tartu Press. It is the oldest periodical in the field. It was initially p ...

'' 27: 128-138. Anderson M. 2003. Rothschild's ouroborus. ''

'' 31(1): 301-314.Rothschild F. S. 2000. ''Creation and Evolution: A Biosemiotic Approach''. Transaction Publishers. In 1935, he published the book “''Symbolik des Hirnbaus: Erscheinungswissenschaftliche Untersuchung über den Bau und die Funktionen des Zentralnervensystems der Wirbeltiere und des Menschen''”. He has developed the communicative approach in biology.

Early life

Friedrich Salomon Rothschild was born in Giessen, Germany, on December 17, 1899. His father was a merchant who sold his goods in the neighboring villages, and up until second grade Rothschild wished to follow in his father’s footsteps. However, Rothschild’s parents were determined that their son hone his intellectual gifts, so starting from the third-grade he attended a Realgymnasium. Rothschild graduated top of his high school class in 1918; for the next six months he served in the military, eventually working under the chief doctor of the army to further his medical studies.

Career

From 1923 to 1924, Friedrich S. Rothschild began to specialize in psychiatry, completing his studies at the University Clinic of Giessen and insane asylum located in Hezberge, Berlin. By 1925 Rothschild was working with psychotherapist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (1889–1957) at the Weißer Hirsch sanatorium in Heidelberg. Their research focused on an analysis of Erich Fromm (1900–1980), a student of psychoanalysis also working under Reichmann. During this time, Rothschild also worked as a volunteer at the Heidelberg Psychiatric Polyclinic under August Homburger, a child psychiatrist. From 1928 to 1930, Rothschild continued his neurological studies under the guidance of Kurt Goldstein (1878–1965) at the Neurological Institute of the University of Frankfurt; around this time, he exchanged letters with Ludwig Klages (1872–1956). From 1930 to 1933, Rothschild continued to work in Frankfurt as an assistant doctor, and at this point in time he began to write his first book. Rothschild’s work was published in 1935 by Karger-Verlag as “''Symbolik des Hirnbaus: Erscheinungswissenschaftliche Untersuchung über den Bau und die Funktionen des Zentralnervensystems der Wirbeltiere und des Menschen''", just a year before he would emigrate to Israel to escape Nazi persecution. Friedrich Rothschild married Margot Hellmuth in 1936, and the couple moved to Jerusalem where Rothschild could focus on psychiatric research. By 1948 Rothschild was working as a consultant at Hadassah University Hospital. In November of 1949, Rothschild published ''»Das Ich und die Regulationen des Erlebnisvorganges«,'' and subsequently in 1958, ''»Das Zentralnervensystem als Symbol des Erlebens«''. In 1961 F.S Rothschild coined the term “biosemiotics” in a lecture for the New York Academy of Sciences, a theory that was influenced by the philosophies of

Edmund Husserl , thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations) , thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view , thesis1_year = 1883 , thesis2_title ...

and

Charles Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...

. Rothschild retired from Hadassah University Hospital in 1965 and dedicated his time to lecturing about his findings. In 1981, Rothschild helped to found the World Associated for Dynamic Psychiatry, acting as the Honorary President of the Israeli Branch. 1986 saw the publication of Rothschild’s »''Die Evolution als innere Anpassung an Gott''«. Friedrich Rothschild died on March 6, 1995.

Works

*Rothschild, Friedrich S. 1963
Posture and psyche
In: Halpern, Lipman (ed.), ''Problems of Dynamic Neurology: Studies on the Higher Functions of the Human Nervous System''. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 475–509.

References

1899 births 1995 deaths German semioticians German psychiatrists Jewish scientists {{semiotician-stub