Verfolgungswahn und Vererbung : metaphysische Medizin bei Goethe Tieck und E.T.A. Hoffmann Even before the persecutory paranoia was classified as paranoia in the middle of the 19th century and thus maintains a firm place in psychiatric nosology it is being discussed by physicians psychologists and literati if not yet on the basis of solid terminology. Maximilian Bergengruen reconstructs this as yet unnoticed pre paranoic history of persecution mania around 1800 as an interplay of medical psychological treatises and literary texts in this case by Goethe Tieck and E.T.A. Hoffmann. The guiding thesis is that in literary confrontation with persecutory delusion a hidden remnant of the medical psychological viewpoint is spelled out and juxtaposed as an equivalent alternative: the Damonian dimension of the disease. Translated from back cover