1935 Shanghai

Vienna is the birthplace of psychoanalysis, which was spread all over the world during the twentieth century. Other branches of psychology and psychiatry also originated in Austria. Fanny G. Halpern was one of these pioneers. A neurologist, she worked as an assistant to the Nobel Prize winner Julius Wagner-Jauregg before leaving Vienna for China in 1933. In 1935, she opened China’s first modern psychiatric hospital in Shanghai. When, not long afterwards, her family was forced to flee from the Nazis, Halpern was able to provide them with refuge in Shanghai.