There is an armchair in Tobias Rüther’s office that he saved from bulky waste. Nobody else from the group of colleagues was interested in the vintage piece from the last century. At least that’s what Rüther says. The armchair stands on thin legs, its velor cover in light teddy bear brown is flawless. Rüther, senior physician at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy on Munich’s Nußbaumstrasse, will ensure that it stays that way. Because he has a sense of beautiful things and history. When he heard that the comfortable seating furniture belonged to Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915), he grabbed it.
Alzheimer, the famous psychiatrist and neuropathologist, came to Munich in 1903 and began his research in the newly opened “Nervenklinik” on Nußbaumstrasse. Alzheimer’s observations of the patient Auguste D. and ultimately the examination of her brain, which he had sent to him after her death, brought the world awareness of the disease of dementia. In a few weeks, a vaccination for Alzheimer’s patients will also be approved in Germany, says Rüther. It’s not actually his topic, but he’s obviously happy about the progress in research.
This armchair once belonged to Alois Alzheimer.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Rüther offers a place on a sofa in his office. The Alzheimer’s chair remains in sight while you talk to Rüther about his work in the venerable LMU inner city clinic. Today, the house is popularly called “Die Nußbaumstrasse” after its location; in the past, it was better known under its first director as the Kraepelin Clinic. There are 220 beds here, as well as a lecture hall. Unlike the clinic in Haar, with which the doctors work closely, teaching is also carried out here. The rows of seats for students rise steeply. Below them there is space for the professors and their patients, for case studies. This scenario has not changed in the past decades.
Most Munich residents probably only know the house from the outside. No children are born here, like in the nearby Portal Clinic on Ziemssenstrasse, here the human inner life is treated, his psyche, his behavior, his fear, his addiction. Anyone who wants to enter here as a visitor must register at the gate.
Rüther deals with addictions. The doctor, who is usually seen in a white coat and tie, has been working on Nußbaumstrasse for more than 20 years. Not for lack of other options, but with a clear awareness of the place. The daily conference with the clinic directors takes place in the library at 8:30 a.m. Currently this is Peter Falkai. There are books behind glass in floor-to-ceiling lockable shelves that hardly anyone picks up these days. Maybe because their content is outdated or can be pulled from the internet with a few clicks. In the library you sit at a table that the ruler in the Kremlin might like. The creaking wooden chairs are mostly the old ones from the early years. Colleagues can also participate from outside via a large screen, as has been the case almost everywhere since the beginning of the pandemic. A lot of other things have also changed over time.
In some wards, men and women are no longer strictly separated. It was realized that the presence of the opposite sex was good for the patients, says Rüther. They also no longer sleep in large rooms like they did in Alzheimer’s days. That mountain hut feeling, bed by bed, doesn’t exist anymore, but there is helpful chemistry. Medications that can be used to treat depression or psychosis, says Rüther. He himself is responsible for private patients and runs the tobacco clinic.
On cardboard cutouts you can meet doctors who once worked here: clinic manager Emil Kraepelin, Bernhard von Gudden and Alois Alzheimer.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf/Stephan Rumpf)
It is open to everyone who wants to give up smoking, whether old, young, poor or rich. People from all walks of life come to Rüther and his team. Your only requirement: enough motivation. Rüther is convinced of his method. It’s really easy if people put in a little effort, he says. And I know that that’s not entirely true. Because many people need several attempts. “But after just ten to 15 days you notice a change.” He blames the fact that they started smoking in the first place on the easy availability of cigarettes, and on this point Rüther becomes passionate. He can rant heartily about the “evil” tobacco industry. And he is just as vehemently upset about the lobbyists who are also persecuting him, precisely because he is so clear in what he says.
Rüther gives lectures and is a sought-after expert in government circles. “I’m happy for everyone who has given up tobacco cigarettes for the time being,” he says. “Because tobacco is really poison and kills people. Every smoker loses about ten years of life. It doesn’t have to be that way.” Rüther also has an opinion on the planned cannabis law, although not quite as definite. After all, he congratulates the federal government on its move to decriminalize cannabis possession and consumption. Rüther is convinced that it does no good at all to ban people from drugs and put them in prison. “That doesn’t work with heroin or with any other drug.”
Richard Wagner, the dwarf: Rüther has the statue from Bayreuth, where he attends the festival as often as possible.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Rüther also uses the word “addiction” for himself. His addiction is to dissuade people from smoking. He says it in a serious voice, he probably actually means it. He also loves the music of Richard Wagner. Also an addiction. Whenever possible, he travels in the summer to where the composer’s spirit can still be felt during the festival, i.e. to Bayreuth. And every few weeks he has to go to the opera in Munich; it’s part of his life.
In Rüther’s room there is a golden statue of Richard Wagner, the size of a garden gnome. A memory of the Upper Franconian city and its great, if not uncontroversial, son. Wagner was an anti-Semite, says Rüther, but he still admired his music. Many Wagnerians live with this contradiction. The addiction doctor Rüther enjoys this irrationality, just like the two spoonfuls of sugar he shovels into his espresso.