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Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker crossed the boundaries separating science, politics and the public sphere. In this he was led by the conviction that scientists in the modern 'technical age' are responsible for consequences resulting from their applied knowledge. Weizsäcker tried to introduce his knowledge into the policy process by advising politicians or by using the public sphere, thus applying pressure on politics. This was not only true for the 'Göttinger Erklärung' in 1957 but also for his engagement in the nuclear energy debate of the 1970s. Influenced by the 'Limits to Growth' discourse, Weizsäcker more and more gravitated towards an ecological world view and increasingly questioned material growth as well as a techno-scientific based understanding of progress. Weizsäcker thought about risks of the technical age in general and of the use of nuclear energy in particular. In the light of a growing fragmentation of scientific authority, Weizsäcker revealed uncertainty as he became fully aware that expertise cannot be based on scientific reason and cannot code the problems in terms of truth, but is inextricably linked with value spheres and contingencies. Nevertheless, his expertise was utilized as he encouraged parts of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) around Erhard Eppler to think about alternatives in energy policy.

After the First World War, the Allied academies of sciences staged a boycott against German scientists and the German language. The objective of the boycott was to prevent the re-establishment of the prewar dominance of German scientists, the German language and German publications in the area of international scientific cooperation. Therefore the Allies excluded German scientists and the German language from international associations, congresses and publications, while they created new international scientific organizations under their leadership. Medical associations and congresses were also affected, e. g. congresses on surgery, ophthalmology and tuberculosis. Allied physicians replaced the "International Anti-Tuberculosis Association" founded in Berlin in 1902 with the "Union Internationale contre la Tuberculose"/"International Union against Tuberculosis", founded in Paris in 1920. Only French and English were used as the official languages of the new scientific organizations, just as in the League of Nations. The boycott was based on the fact that the German scientists had denied German war guilt and war crimes and glorified German militarism in a manifesto "To The Civilized World!" in 1914. The boycott first started in 1919 and had to be abolished in 1926, when Germany became a member of the League of Nations. Many German and foreign physicians as well as other scientists protested against the boycott. Some German scientists and institutions even staged a counter-boycott impeding the resumption of international collaboration. The boycott entailed an enduring decline of German as an international scientific language. After the Second World War scientists of the victorious Western Powers implemented a complete reorganization of the international scientific arena, based on the same organizational structures and language restrictions they had built up in 1919/1920. At the same time scientists from the U.S.A. staged an active language and publication policy, in order to establish the dominance of English in the international scientific arena.

The article summarizes in an international perspective what kind of results psychiatric deinstitutionalization has brought so far: a profound change of size and functions of the psychiatric hospital; better services for people with less severe problems; and the failing of community services to compensate for some of the functions of the former asylums, resulting in trans-institutionalization and/or neglect for many chronic patients. Three different sociological versions to explain the background and typical outcomes of psychiatric deinstitutionalization have been brought forward so far: political economy, professional dominance and post-structuralism. They are confronted with an approach using the concept of medicalisation which offers a more comprehensive understanding of the process.

The special position of psychiatry among the various medical disciplines is determined not least by the phenomenon of violent behaviour of some of its patients and the possibility of coercive measures against patients. The worldwide process of deinstitutionalization since the last decades is characterized by a substantial reduction of inpatient treatment and the expansion and improvement of increasingly specialized community care offers. Yet, at the same time paradoxically we are confronted with an increasing neglect of the special care requirements of a certain group of difficult-to-place patients (mostly severely chronically ill with high rates of comorbidity). Despite different social and legal conditions this has uniformly led to an increasing shift of these patients into the forensic system which is illustrated by a comparison of international and Austrian data. Forensic psychiatry is hardly able to cope with this development because of structural and personal deficits existing and is in danger of being misused primarily as an instrument of social control. From the position of forensic psychiatry the limits of deinstitutionalization are set by the feeling of responsibility of general psychiatry for a subgroup of troublesome and difficult to treat patients.

This article provides a short review of the legal rules in Austria dealing with the minimum standards of expert opinions, absolutely necessary for the understanding and assessment of the opinion. As shown by an example of a case of handwriting investigation experts often ignore even the minimum standards. On the other hand judges do not consequently require these standards. This gap between theory and practice can only be filled by a thorough and perfect examination and by providing specific information to potential clients, given by professional associations.