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    Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna
    Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna
    Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna
    Audiobook9 hours

    Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna

    Written by Edith Sheffer

    Narrated by Christa Lewis

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    In 1930s and 1940s Vienna, child psychiatrist Hans Asperger sought to define autism as a diagnostic category, aiming to treat those children, usually boys, he deemed capable of participating fully in society. Depicted as a compassionate and devoted researcher, Asperger was in fact deeply influenced by Nazi psychiatry. Although he did offer individualized care to children he deemed promising, he also prescribed harsh institutionalization and even transfer to Spiegelgrund, one of the Reich's deadliest killing centers, for children with greater disabilities, who, he held, could not integrate into the community.

    With sensitivity and passion, Edith Sheffer's scrupulous research reveals the heartbreaking voices and experiences of many of these children, while also illuminating a Nazi regime obsessed with sorting the population into categories, cataloging people by race, heredity, politics, religion, sexuality, criminality, and biological defects?labels that became the basis of either rehabilitation or persecution and extermination.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJul 3, 2018
    ISBN9781684411757
    Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna

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    • 5/5
      This was a very interesting look at not just Hans Asperger, but autism, eugenics, and Nazi science.

      In the 1920s, Vienna pioneered an interventionist approach to child development. Eugenics was in vogue, but didn't mean only the negatives we associate it with today--rather, it was a two pronged approach, with active medical, social work, and education departments designed to improve the lives of children and families. One element of this approach was the Curative Education Department where Hans Asperger came to work. Autism had already begun to become recognized at the clinic.

      Under the Third Reich, however, this took a darker turn. As Asperger, already a committed Catholic and conservative, took over the department, the two prongs became a selection process for children. Were they "educable"? Could they be saved and turned into a useful part of the Volk? Or were they unfit? Despite his later protestations, Asperger became a part of that selection process--sending children to Spiegelgrund, home of the Nazi child euthanasia program.

      This is both a disturbing history of Nazi child euthanasia and an insight into how Asperger's diagnosis was developed. While he highlighted the successes of some of the children, in an effort to present them as worthy of salvation, he increasingly stereotyped the behaviors of the children. He only recognized autistic behavior in boys (a prejudice that continues today). And he defined it as "autistic psychopathy"--with connotations in German similar to those in English.

      Despite his later protests, and some distancing away from his earlier statements, Sheffer shows that Asperger's work cannot be completely separated from its context of Nazi psychiatry.
    • 4/5
      Interesting history of Asperger's diagnosis of autism during the Nazi regime in Vienna. I found it a little dry going over the medical information but most of this is history of how children were diagnosed and sent to hospitals where it was determined if they lived or died. The extent of how it was done and covered up was mind-boggling. I was shocked by how many doctors, nurses, social workers, and parents were involved and very few said no. I particularly liked the survivors stories but they were scarred for life. I also liked that I was told what happened to the main perpetrators, though few ended up paying for the crimes they committed. I'm glad I read it but it was a painful read.