Skip to main content
Log in

Non-complicit: Revisiting Hans Asperger’s Career in Nazi-era Vienna

  • OriginalPaper
  • Published:
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Recent allegations that pediatrician Hans Asperger legitimized Nazi policies, including forced sterilization and child euthanasia, are refuted with newly translated and chronologically-ordered information that takes into account Hitler’s deceptive ‘halt’ to the T4 euthanasia program in 1941. It is highly unlikely that Asperger was aware of the T4 program when he referred Herta Schreiber to Am Spiegelgrund or when he mentioned that institution 4 months later on the medical chart of another (unrelated) girl, Elisabeth Schreiber. Asperger campaigned vigorously from 1938 to 1943 to have his specialization, Curative Education, take priority in the diagnosis and treatment of disabled children over other fields that promoted Nazi racial hygiene policies. He neither disparaged his patients nor was he sexist. By 1938, he had identified the essentials of Asperger syndrome and described an unnamed boy whom he later profiled (as Ernst K.) in 1944. Rather than doing ‘thin’ research, Asperger made discoveries that were prescient, and some of his activities conformed to definitions of “individual resistance.”

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Curative education is also known as remedial education or special education.

  2. In Czech’s paper, the endnote superscript numbers are out of sync with their corresponding texts; the endnotes cited here for his paper correspond to his actual endnotes rather than superscripts in his text.

  3. No euthanasia law was ever formally enacted in Germany or Austria during this era Thomas et al. (2006, p. 343).

  4. Asperger refers here to the Main (Public) Health Office in Vienna, which established a Department of Eugenics and Racial Hygiene after the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring was enacted in Austria in 1940. The Department registered the names of individuals with an array of presumably hereditary defects that potentially rendered them as having “lives not worth living” and, thus, candidates for evaluation for possible forced sterilization (Thomas et al. 2006, p. 344). The Health Office should not be confused with Am Spiegelgrund, to which some disabled children were referred for observation and were surreptitiously murdered under the secret Nazi T4 program.

  5. From some of Asperger’s comments in 1944, it is clear that he was writing about Ernst K. in retrospect.

  6. By “automaton-like,” Asperger was probably referring to wooden affect (tone-of-voice) combined with physical clumsiness.

  7. Czech also observes that, “as far as the written record is concerned, there is no indication that Asperger was guided by personal animosity towards Jews” (Czech 2018, p. 12).

  8. For instance, would-be parents who are potential carriers of genes for Huntington’s disease or Down syndrome may, or may not, choose to undergo genetic testing in order to inform choices about conceiving or continuing pregnancies.

  9. As noted in the introduction, Sheffer identified Asperger as a child psychiatrist, which he was not.

References

  • Asperger, H. (1937). Das psychisch abnorme Kind. Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 50, 1460–1461.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1938). Das psychisch abnorme Kind. Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 51, 1314–1317.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1939). Padagogische Therapie bei abnormen Kindern. Medizinische Klinik, 35, 943–946.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1941a). Tagungsbericht: Erziehungsfragen im Rahmen der Kinderkundlichen Woche (Wien 1. bis 7. September 1940). Monatsschrift fur alle Gebiete Nervenarztlicher Tatigkeit mit besonderer berucksichtigung der Psychomatischen Beziehungen, 14, 28–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1941b). Zur Erziehungstherapie in der Jugendfürsorge. Monatsschr Kinderheilkd, 87, 238–247.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1942). Jugendpsychiatrie’und ‘Heilpädagogik’. Munch Med Wochenschr, 89, 352–356.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1944a). Die “Autistischen Psychopathen” im Kindesalter. Archiv fur Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, 117(1), 76–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1944b). ‘Autistic psychopathy’ in childhood. Translated and annotated by U. Frith (Ed.) in Autism and Asperger syndrome (1991) (pp. 37–92). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Asperger, H. (1944c). Der “Heilpädagogische Hort. Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 57, 392–393.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1952). Heilpädagogik. Wien: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1957). Probleme der modernen Pädiatrie. Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 69(31), 549–553.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1962). “Ecce infans”, Zur Ganzheitsproblematik in der modernen Pädiatrie. Wien klin Wochenschr (Wiener Antrittsvorlesung), 74, 936–941.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1969). Frühe seelische Vollendung bei todgeweihten Kindern. Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 81, 365–366.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1971). Kurze Geschichte der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Heilpädagogik. Heilpädagogik: Fachzeitschrift der Heilpädagogischen Gesellschaft Österreich, 14, 50–52.

    Google Scholar 

  • Asperger, H. (1974). Autobiographical radio interview with Hans Asperger. History and stories: Austrian Media Library: ORF.

  • Asperger, H. (1979). Problems of infantile autism. Communication: The Journal of the National Autistic Society (lecture given in Fribourg, Switzerland on March, 13, 1977), 13, 45–52.

  • Asperger Felder, M. (2008). Zum Sehen geboren, zum Schauen bestellt. Hans Asperger (1906–1980): Leben und Werk. In: Castell R, editor. Hundert Jahre Kinder-und Jugendpsychiatrie. Biografien und Autobiografien. V&R unipress GmbH (pp. 99–117).

  • Baron-Cohen, S. (2002). The extreme male brain theory of autism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6(6), 248–254.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baron-Cohen, S., Ashwin, E., Ashwin, C., Tavassoli, T., & Chakrabarti, B. (2009). Talent in autism: Hyper-systemizing, hyper-attention to detail and sensory hypersensitivity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1522), 1377–1383.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beacher, F. D., Minati, L., Baron-Cohen, S., Lombardo, M. V., Lai, M. C., Gray, M. A., et al. (2012). Autism attenuates sex differences in brain structure: A combined voxel-based morphometry and diffusion tensor imaging study. AJNR American Journal of Neuroradiology, 33(1), 83–89. https://doi.org/10.3174/ajnr.A2880.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Brezinka, W. (1997). Heilpädagogik an der Medizinischen Fakultät der Universität Wien. Ihre Geschichte von 1911–1985: Orthopedagogy at the faculty of medicine at the university of Vienna-its history from 1911 to 1985: Beltz.

  • Czech, H. (2018). Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and “race hygiene” in Nazi-era Vienna. Molecular Autism, 9(1), 29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Falk, D., & Schofield, E. P. (2018). Geeks, Genes, and the Evolution of Asperger Syndrome: University of New Mexico Press.

  • Feinstein, A. (2010). A history of autism: Conversations with the pioneers: Wiley, New York.

  • Frith, U. (1991). Asperger and his syndrome. In U. Frith (Ed.), Autism and asperger syndrome (pp. 1–36). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Goldenberg, A. (2015). Das Tagebuch des Hansi Busztin. Falter, 17, 18–21.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gunter, H. L., Ghaziuddin, M., & Ellis, H. D. (2002). Asperger syndrome: Tests of right hemisphere functioning and interhemispheric communication. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 32(4), 263–281.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Häupl, W. (2006). Die ermordeten Kinder vom Spiegelgrund: Gedenkdokumentation für die Opfer der NS-Kindereuthanasie in Wien.

  • Hepburn, M. A. (2014). Lives worthy of life and remembrance: Memorialization of the National Socialist Aktion T4 Euthanasia Programme.

  • Iossifov, I., Levy, D., Allen, J., Ye, K., Ronemus, M., Lee, Y., et al. (2015). Low load for disruptive mutations in autism genes and their biased transmission. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(41), E5600–E5607.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Konrad, H. (2008). Righteous and courageous in the face of Nazism: Austrian resistance against the Nazis, Myths and realities. Accessed September 9, 2018.

  • Lai, M. C., Lombardo, M. V., Pasco, G., Ruigrok, A. N., Wheelwright, S. J., Sadek, S. A., et al. (2011). A behavioral comparison of male and female adults with high functioning autism spectrum conditions. PLoS ONE, 6(6), e20835. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020835.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Martin, B. (2013). Euthanasia tactics: Patterns of injustice and outrage. SpringerPlus, 2(1), 256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neugebauer, W. (1998). Racial Hygiene in Vienna 1938. Wien Klin Wochenschr, Sonderheft, March.

  • O’nions, E., & Noens, I. (2018). Commentary: Conceptualising demand avoidance in an ASD context: A response to Osman Malik & Gillian Baird (2018). Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 23(4), 389–390.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Padawer, R. The recovered. (2014). The New York Times magazine. pp. 20–27; 46–47.

  • Rigele, B. (2006). Kindereuthanasie in Wien 1940–1945: Krankengeschichten als Zeugen. In W. Haupl (Ed.), Die ermordeten Kinder vom Spiegelgrund (pp. 25–43). Vienna: Bohlau Verlag.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Ronen, G. M., Meaney, B., Dan, B., Zimprich, F., Stögmann, W., & Neugebauer, W. (2009). From Eugenic Euthanasia to habilitation of disabled children: Andreas Rett’s contribution. Journal of Child Neurology, 24(1), 115–127.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sheffer, E. (2018). Asperger’s Children: The origins of autism in Nazi Vienna, New York: WW Norton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silberman, S. (2015). Neurotribes: The legacy of autism and the future of neurodiversity. New York: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Survivors, S. Spiegelgrund Survivors Speak Out. http://www.gedenkstaettesteinhof.at/en/interview. Accessed September 2, 2018.

  • Thomas, F. P., Beres, A., & Shevell, M. I. (2006). “A Cold Wind Coming”: Heinrich Gross and Child Euthanasia in Vienna. Journal of Child Neurology, 21(4), 342–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turda, M. (2010). Focus on Austria and Germany (review of three books). Social History of Medicine, 23(2), 408–412.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Watson, J. D., & Crick, F. H. (1953). Genetical implications of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid. Nature, 171(4361), 964–967.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wing, L., Gould, J., & Gillberg, C. (2011). Autism spectrum disorders in the DSM-V: Better or worse than the DSM-IV? Research in Developmental Disabilities, 32(2), 768–773.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • WStLA. (2002). Book of the dead. http://www.gedenkstaettesteinhof.at/en/BookoftheDead/book-dead. Accessed November 19, 2018

Download references

Acknowledgments

This paper was inspired by a conversation with Michael Brown, President of the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Laura Holt, SAR’s librarian, helped obtain sources from the German literature. I thank Elga Wulfert of the University at Albany, State University of New York, for expert advice about the translation of Asperger’s 1938 paper, and Uta Frith, University College London, and science writer Steve Silberman for providing useful feedback on an earlier version of this paper. Franz Waldhauser, University of Vienna, is acknowledged for providing information and helpful discussions. I am grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their suggestions. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

DF conceived of the study, translated articles from the German literature, interpreted data, drafted the manuscript, and prepared the translation of Asperger’s 1938 article that appears in Electronic Supplementary Material Appendix 1.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dean Falk.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The author declares that she has no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 46 KB)

Supplementary material 2 (DOCX 46 KB)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Falk, D. Non-complicit: Revisiting Hans Asperger’s Career in Nazi-era Vienna. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 2573–2584 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03981-7

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-03981-7

Keywords

Navigation