29.01.2026
Prof. Dieter Vaitl stands in the direct tradition of the institute’s founder, Prof. Hans Bender (1907–1991). Professor Johannes Mischo (1930-2001) succeeded Bender in 1975, first taking over his chair of Psychology and Frontier Areas of Psychology at the University of Freiburg and then, after Bender’s death in 1991, also becoming director of the IGPP. In 2001, after Mischo’s death, Dieter Vaitl became director of the institute and, two years later, also took over as chairman of the IGPP’s supporting association. Since Vaitl himself was chair of Clinical and Physiological Psychology at the University of Giessen at the time, he commuted between Giessen and Freiburg for several years and was actively supported in the institute’s management ‘on site’ by a management board consisting of the department heads at the time.
Dieter Vaitl’s relationship with the IGPP and Freiburg parapsychology dates back to the years when the institute, founded in 1950, was still located at Eichhalde 12 in Freiburg-Herdern on the“magic hill.” He worked there as a student assistant from 1964 to 1967 and always had fond memories of this private research institute, its founder, and the “anima” of the institute, its long-time managing director, Ms. Lotte Böhringer (1917-1994). This is evident from the letter he wrote to his academic teacher, Hans Bender, on his 80th birthday on February 5, 1987, which can be read in the special issue of the Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie (Vol. 29, Issue 1, 1987) published by me on this occasion.
Card experiments on extrasensory perception (ESP) conducted in 1966 at the Eichhalde Institute. From left to right: Claude Ruffin (intern), Prof. Hans Bender, student Dieter Vaitl, test subject HS.
In his memoirs describing his time at Eichhalde, Dieter Vaitl recounts not only his participation in the so-called tape recordings with Konstantin Raudive in Bad Krozingen, but also his encounter with the ‘haunted medium’ H. S., who was tested for alleged extrasensory perception (ESP) using Rhine’s card experiments and kept the small Eichhalde team in suspense at the time, especially since four IGPP employees themselves had personally witnessed spectacular physical phenomena, commonly referred to as “spontaneous psychokinesis,” or “haunting” for short.
In the letter to his academic teacher Hans Bender, I mentioned, Dieter Vaitl notes that Bender was “far from the hostility toward happiness of many older people.” Looking back, this can certainly be said with good reason of Dieter Vaitl, who liked to respond to compliments about his handsome appearance by saying, “The drake shows off his plumage.”
When Prof. Vaitl became director of the IGPP in 2001, I was a doctoral student and one of the first scholarship holders at the institute. At that time, the IGPP was still very well funded thanks to grants from the Holler Foundation. It had departments and three times as many employees as it does today. The „Bender Institute for Neuroimaging“, an institute affiliated tot he IGPP, had just started operations. Soon after, the annual grants from the Holler Foundation were suddenly reduced drastically, and from then on, cutbacks and savings were the order of the day. This led to many rumors, as well as discontent and criticism.
In July 2022, I was appointed director of the institute. In my new role, I gained insights into the IGPP’s financial development over the last 20 years and the major financial problems of the last 10 years. Looking back, I can say that Dieter Vaitl led the institute through these challenging times with prudence, foresight, and great commitment for 20 years. To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the IGPP’s founding and his departure as director of the institute, Vaitl published the research volume “An den Grenzen unseres Wissens – Von der Faszination des Paranormalen” (At the Frontiers of Our Knowledge – The Fascination of the Paranormal) in the spring of 2020. The approximately 30 chapters summarize the multidisciplinary work of the institute over the last 20 years, which was carried out under his authoritative leadership. This volume is a continuation of the volume “An den Grenzen der Erkenntnis – Handbuch der wissenschaftlichen Anomalistik” (At the Frontiers of Knowledge – Handbook of Scientific Anomalistics), which Vaitl had already published in 2015 together with Gerhard Mayer, Ina Schmied-Knittel, and Michael Schetsche. The volume “SPUK” (Haunting), published in 2021 by Dieter Vaitl together with Andreas Fischer and dedicated to the photographs of Leif Geiges, once again ties in with Prof. Bender’s attempt to document his haunting investigations at that time.
Company outing to the exhibition ‘Be Happy! We Do Not Forget You’ at the Zander Collection in Stadionschen Schloss in Bönnigheim, curated by Andreas Fischer and Veit Loers and on display from October 2017 to January 2018.
From my personal encounters with Prof. Vaitl as a doctoral student at the institute, I will always remember his joking standard question: “So, Mr. Kornmeier, how are things going? Have you discovered the world formula yet?”
Today, I look back with gratitude on my relatively short 3.5 years as director of the institute and member of the association’s board. Prof. Vaitl was chairman of the board until his death. Eberhard Bauer and I were regular guests at the Vaitl home for our board meetings, where we were well looked after by his wife Christel. During this time, I had the opportunity to get to know and appreciate Dieter Vaitl from a different perspective. Working with him on the board was always professional, trusting, and characterized by mutual appreciation.
As institute director and chairman of the board, Dieter Vaitl had a decisive influence on the IGPP for many years. And until the very end, our institute and its future were very close to his heart.
Death is, of course, also a frontier area of psychology, and the question of whether there is something after death – the time-honored “survival” problem of the Society for Psychical Research – is also a topic of interest to our institute. I would say that there is interesting literature on this subject, but the question remains open. If death is not the end, Dieter Vaitl may now have an answer to the question of the world formula. In any case, I will miss him in this life.
References
Fischer A. & Vaitl D., (Hrsg.) (2021): Spuk! Die Fotografien von Leif Geiges. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg.
Vaitl, D. (2020). An den Grenzen unseres Wissens. Von der Faszination des Paranormalen. Herder.
Vaitl, D. (1987). Brief zum 80. Geburtstag von Hans Bender. Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie, 29(1).
Mayer, G., Schetsche, M. Schmied-Knittel, I. & Vaitl, D. (Hrsg.) (2015). An den Grenzen der Erkenntnis: Handbuch der wissenschaftlichen Anomalistik. Schattauer Verlag.
