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Citations since 2017
Publications
Publications (32)
Erwin Deutsch (1917–1992) was an outstanding representative of Austrian internal medicine after World War II. Little is known about his early biography. Considered a “Jewish half-breed” under Nazi racial laws, he was subjected to harassment during his training. Nevertheless, he can be regarded as scientific heir of Hans Eppinger (1879–1946), who en...
Although 75 years have passed since the end of World War II, the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck Gesellschaft, MPG), successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, KWG), still must grapple with how two of its foremost institutes—the KWI of Psychiatry in Munich and the KWI for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch—amassed collections o...
Thanks to a recent donation by Elsevier, the Medical University of Vienna now holds in its collections the known existing original paintings for Eduard Pernkopf's Atlas of Topographic and Applied Human Anatomy. This atlas is widely considered a pinnacle of the art of anatomical illustration. However, it is severely tainted by its historical origins...
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.
During the Third Reich, state‐sponsored violence was linked to scientific research on many levels. Prisoners were used as involuntary subjects for medical experiments, and body parts from victims were used in anatomy and neuropathology on a massive scale. In many cases, such specimens remained in scientific collections and were used until long afte...
Eduard Pernkopf (1888–1955) became head of the Second Anatomical Institute in 1933, dean of the medical faculty in 1938 with the Annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany, and rector of the University of Vienna in 1943. He gained worldwide recognition with his anatomical atlas, which many consider unequaled to this day. In the decades that followed,...
Six years after it was first introduced into psychiatry in 1938, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) became the subject of criminal human experiments in Nazi Germany. In 1944, at the Auschwitz III / Monowitz camp hospital, the Polish Jewish prisoner psychiatrist Zenon Drohocki started experimental treatments on prisoners with an ECT device that he had...
Background
Hans Asperger (1906–1980) first designated a group of children with distinct psychological characteristics as “autistic psychopaths” in 1938. In 1944 he published a comprehensive study on the topic, which would find international acknowledgement from the 1980s. From then on the eponym Asperger’s syndrome became increasingly more widespre...
In her recent paper ‘Non-complicit: Revisiting Hans Asperger’s Career in Nazi-era Vienna,’ Dean Falk claims to refute what she calls ‘allegations’ about Hans Asperger’s role during National Socialism documented in my 2018 paper ‘Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and “race hygiene” in Nazi-era Vienna’ and Edith Sheffer’s book ‘Asperger’s Children.’...
Since Vienna University’s 1997/98 inquiry into the background of Eduard Pernkopf’s anatomical atlas, German and Austrian anatomical institutes have been forced to confront their past, particularly the widespread procurement of bodies of victims of National Socialism. This paper focuses on the Anatomical Institute in Innsbruck, which received bodies...
Background
Hans Asperger (1906–1980) first designated a group of children with distinct psychological characteristics as ‘autistic psychopaths’ in 1938, several years before Leo Kanner’s famous 1943 paper on autism. In 1944, Asperger published a comprehensive study on the topic (submitted to Vienna University in 1942 as his postdoctoral thesis), wh...
Following its inception, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), rapidly spread all over the world, including Nazi Germany. Paradoxically, at the same time, the euthanasia programme was started in Germany: the extermination of people with intellectual disabilities and severe psychiatric disorders. In Lower Austria, Dr Emil Gelny, who had been granted a sp...
Although the medical crimes against the allegedly biologically “unfit” under National Socialist rule have received increased attention during the past two decades, their exact relationship to the regime's broader objectives in terms of racial policy remains in large part an open question. This is not to say that race has not been addressed in this...
The killing of patients in psychiatric institutions and specially designed extermination centers during WWII provided many opportunities in various medical disciplines for experiments, clinical research, and the collection of specimens. The existing scholarship on this topic is mainly focused on neuropathological research on victims’ brains during...
Walther Birkmayer, an Austrian neurologist, codiscovered the efficacy of levodopa therapy for Parkinsonism in 1961. However, little has been published regarding Birkmayer's ties to National Socialism. Through documentary review, we have determined that he was an early illegal member of the SS and the Nazi party, taking part in the "de-Jewification"...
Am Spiegelgrund, originally an exclusively topographic term, during WW II designated one of the most important killing facilities in the 'children's euthansia' program. It was part of the City of Vienna's public health and welfare system. Its creation in 1940 coincided with attempts to establish Therapeutic Pegagogy as a new discipline in Germany,...
The Nazi drive for racial order led to the implementation of an authoritarian public health system which systematically subordinated the rights of the individual to the preventive protection of the Volksgemeinschaft. This article focuses on the example of Vienna in order to address the history of venereal disease control, public health politics tow...
Public health, racial hygiene and eugenics under the Third Reich: the example of Vienna
The paper deals with the implementation of eugenic and racist practices in Public Health and Welfare domain. In this process, the Public Health offices played a vital and widely underestimated role, after they had been completely reorganized for this purpose. Vi...
Zugl.: Wien, Universiẗat, Magisterarbeit, 2003.
Projects
Project (1)
Unlike several other German anatomical institutes, a scientific reappraisal of the Nazi period at the Institutes of Anatomy as well as Histology and Embryology at the University of Innsbruck is still pending.
In line with other reports, the procurement of bodies to the anatomy during 1938 - 1945 will be examined and analyzed. Several groups can be identified: (1) Executed from the prison Munich-Stadelheim, (2) victims from Stalag XVIII C (concentration camp) St. Johann im Pongau, Stalag XVIII C / Z Landeck and the "Stalag Jenbach", and (3) Executed by condemnation of the Innsbruck military court. A fourth group comprises Jewish victims of the Shoah, and a fifth group could constitute euthanasia victims.
The biographies of Innsbruck's Anatomy staff - in view of the Nazi era - are hitherto very "thin". The project aims to elaborate these life stories and scientific activities during the Nazi period.
With this project we want to contribute to the elucidation of the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship. This concerns the ethically inacceptable use of executed victims of Nazi "justice", but also of prisoners of war, on the other hand, the possible committment by members in Nazi crimes.
