Hans Asperger and Eugenics
Asperger’s personnel files, political assessments by Nazi authorities, and medical case records, once thought destroyed, have recently been rediscovered in Municipal and Provincial Archives of Vienna. Herwig Czech, a medical historian, examined these documents. He has found that they tell a very different version of Asperger’s story. They show that Asperger needed no protection from the Gestapo- because he was never in danger from them. Party officials in Vienna had “no objection whatsoever” to Asperger and reports by the Vienna Gestapo made in August 1940, state that they had nothing on him. More damningly, however, was the fact that these same papers implicate Asperger in sharing aspects of the Nazi philosophy of eugenics and being involved in the program.
As Nazism rooted itself deeper into Austrian society, the language Asperger used to describe his young patients began to change. In 1938, he described autistic children somewhat vaguely as “well characterized.” However, just three years later, he described these same children as “abnormal.” By 1944, Asperger had gone further still, referring to his patients as being outside “the greater organism” of the Nazi state. Perhaps Asperger was creating a smokescreen to protect himself from scrutiny as Adam Feinstein claims. However, such descriptions would hardly have safeguarded his patients.
Indeed, there is evidence that Asperger knowingly referred children in his care to the notorious Spiegelgrund clinic, which was headed by his old colleague and another of Dr. Hamburger’s protégées, Erwin Jekelius. Under Jekelius ‘s regime, between 1940 and 1945, nearly 800 children were sent to Spiegelgrund where they were experimented upon and murdered by barbiturate-induced pneumonia. Knowing Jekelius as well as he did, it is unlikely Asperger was unaware of what occurred in this clinic.
Based on this information, it seems that Asperger’s hands were far from clean in the matter of the eugenics program. However, he was ‘selective’ about who he sent to Spiegelgrund. Asperger’s decision was motivated by his belief that if there was a chance a child could improve and be of ‘use’ within society, every effort should be made on that child’s behalf. Consequently, Asperger seems to have sent those children he believed were beyond hope of recovery to Spiegelgrund. One of those heartbreaking victims was two-year-old Herta Schreiber. Herta had contracted encephalitis, which had left her with mental and physical problems. Asperger referred the little girl to Spiegelfrund. Three months later, she was dead.
Perhaps Asperger saw the murder of children, like Herta, as a necessary evil; a sacrifice that would save at least some of the children under his care – and of course himself. However, the fact remains that Hans Asperger tried to sanitize his past by obscuring events- and lying. His name, once lauded, is now stained. However, Herwig Czech does not believe that should obliterate the good he did towards a greater understanding of autism: “I think we also have to part ways with the idea that an eponym is an unmitigated honor of the person,” he explained, in a response to debates over the removing of Asperger’s name from this syndrome, “It is simply a historical acknowledgement that can be, in some cases, troubling or problematic.”
NOTE: Recognized since 1944 as a form of high-functioning autism, Asperger’s Syndrome disappeared from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 2013. While it was previously considered a stand-alone diagnosis (separate from autism itself or another kind of autism previously known as “pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified,” or PDD-NOS) Asperger’s Syndrome now falls under the umbrella term Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), in which patients could be grouped along a continuum from mild to severe.
Where Do We Get our stuff? Here are our sources:
New evidence ties Hans Asperger to Nazi eugenics program, Hannah Furfaro, Spectrum, April 19, 2018.
Asperger Syndrome, The National Autistic Society
History of Asperger’s Syndrome, Asperger Syndrome-ME.UK
Did Hans Asperger (1906-1980) have Asperger Syndrome? Viktoria Lyons and Michael Fitzgerald, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorder, November 2007, Volume 37, Issue 10, pp 2020-2021