Heinrich Hermann Mebes was the “schizophrenic master” – so called by Hans Prinzhorn – who went missing. Originally one of 12 case studies in Prinzhorn’s ground-breaking book Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922), his section was dropped when Prinzhorn reduced the number to ten, ear-marking Mebes (along with artist Else Blankenhorn) for separate monographs due to the complexity of their work.
Prinzhorn complained that he was in danger of losing himself in gnostic and mystical studies over Mebes’ intricate miniatures. But the monograph never transpired. All that exist are the few paragraphs in the 1922 volume, in which Prinzhorn discusses “a clockmaker from the country who lived in the institution for almost 30 years” who began to paint 21 years after his schizophrenia was confirmed, and, on his death in 1918, left behind five notebooks filled with “numerous subtly painted watercolours”, and “extremely voluminous written accounts in poetry and prose couched in extremely stylised and oracularly dark language”. {read}