Non-complicit: Revisiting Hans Asperger's Career in Nazi-era Vienna.
Newly translated letters argue Asperger resisted Nazi euthanasia orders.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Falk (2020) went back to wartime Vienna and looked at Hans Asperger’s own words.
The author translated letters, case notes, and office memos that other writers had skipped.
The goal: see if Asperger helped the Nazis kill disabled children or fought the policy.
What they found
The paper says Asperger refused to send kids to the euthanasia ward.
He wrote that doctors should protect “difficult” children, not end their lives.
Dean argues the label “Nazi collaborator” is unfair and should be dropped.
How this fits with other research
Falk (2019) made the same point a year earlier, but with fewer documents.
The 2020 paper adds new letters, so it extends the 2019 rebuttal rather than replaces it.
Together the two papers push back against Czech and other historians who call Asperger complicit.
Ehrensaft (2018) and López (2015) stay neutral on the history fight; they just want today’s clinicians to treat autistic clients with respect.
Why it matters
If you teach ethics or autism history, you now have fresh primary sources to cite.
You can tell supervisees the Asperger story is still debated, not settled.
Most of all, it reminds us to check facts before we repeat dark origin tales that can stain modern autism care.
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02At a glance
03Original 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."
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2020 · doi:10.1007/s10803-019-03981-7