Du Prel, Karl Ludwig August Friedrich Maximilian Alfred Freiherr

Du Prel, an initial follower and protégé of Eduard von Hartmann, received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Tübingen in 1868 for a philosophical study of the metaphysical implications of temporal divergences in dreams. From 1872, he pursued a career as a private scholar and began publishing a large number of articles and essays on philosophy, aesthetics, astronomy, and psychical research, many of which were subsequently compiled in book form. He became an influential author on the importance of mental states for physiological processes and healing, on hypnotism, and on the psychology of dreams and the subconscious mind. His main concern was to develop a view of human personality that has a certain a priori plausibility of post-mortem survival, and he embraced the phenomena of spiritualism, although he remained sceptical as to the identity claims of "spirits" that purported to communicate through mediums. Du Prel, whom Sigmund Freud called “that brilliant mystic”, was widely read by psychologists such as Freud, Carl Gustav Jung and Frederic W. H. Myers. Among his admirers were artists like Rainer Maria Rilke and Wassily Kandinsky.