His name is mentioned very often in Poland when one of the autism spectrum disorders is diagnosed. Hans Asperger collaborated with the Spiegelgrund children’s clinic in Vienna, where over 800 sick and disabled children were euthanized. Medical experiments were carried out on hundreds of others. Asperger was to not only know about it, but also to take an active part in the program.
- Hans Asperger was an Austrian pediatrician who described a disorder later named Asperger’s Syndrome
- For years he worked as a doctor in Viennese clinics and hospitals, while being an active scientist
- There is evidence that he participated in Operation T4 – the Nazi program for the elimination of terminally ill and disabled people
- Asperger collaborated with the Spiegelgrund clinic where children were euthanized; he himself would send his patients there
- You can find more similar stories on the TvoiLokony home page
A talented loner
Medical terms, such as the names of diseases or disorders, are often derived from the names of researchers who discovered them or contributed significantly to the diagnosis of their etiology or treatment. This was the case with the Austrian physician Hans Asperger, who devoted a large part of his research work to the syndrome of symptoms similar to autism (he himself called them autistic psychopathy at the time). But 40 years had passed before his most important scientific publication crossed the borders of his homeland and the disorder he was describing was given his name. The researcher did not live to see his fame, although he could not complain about the lack of success in his professional career.
Born in 1906 in Hausbrunn (Lower Austria), Asperger was the son of farmers. Little is known about his childhood – reportedly from an early age he showed the ability to languages and memorize longer texts (he especially liked to recreate Franz Grillparzer’s poetry from memory) and behaviors that resemble those they describe as autistic years later (Some researchers have suggested that hence the physician’s interest in this disorder).
As a teenager, he joined the Bund Neuland youth movement, which had a great influence on his subsequent interest in socialization, personalization and the physical, psychological, social and spiritual difficulties that affect personality development. Years later, he was remembered as a withdrawn, quiet boy who barely made friends. A specific feature of Hans, who liked to quote himself and spoke about himself in the third person, was often noted. Difficulties in establishing relationships were to remain with him for life.
He carried out his medical studies in Vienna, crowned with the defense of his doctoral dissertation in 1931, prepared under the supervision of Franz Hamburger, whose lectures and tips – as he himself recalled – had a huge impact on his work and career. A year later, he joined the university children’s clinic, in which – thanks to his acquaintance with his mentor – he received the position of the head of the special education department. With a brief hiatus from an apprenticeship at a psychiatric hospital in Leipzig, he remained in this position for the next two decades, treating the hospital’s youngest patients and conducting scientific observations of developmental disabilities. It was here that he built the basis for his most important theory, and it was here that he selected children for those who had a chance to live with dignity and those who were not worth living further.
See also: A gene associated with Asperger’s syndrome and empathy
The Psychopathy of “Little Professors”
Hans Asperger made his first public appearance on autistic psychopathy in 1938. Although the researcher’s findings were published in the Viennese medical weekly, the world of science had to wait another six years for a broader approach to the subject. The delay, which was influenced, inter alia, by the outbreak of World War II, allowed the Austrian to better reflect on the issue and complete the observations made. When in 1944 the publication entitled «Autistic childhood psychopathy», it turned out that the doctor had already defined the entire symptom complex of the new disorder.
In the article, Asperger described the children he cared for. They were, as he called them, “little professors” – extremely intelligent, absorbed in their thoughts and interests, linguistically fluent, but at the same time clumsy in terms of motor skills, devoid of empathy and showing great difficulties in establishing social and emotional relationships. The doctor put forward the thesis that these children in adulthood will develop their potential and their work will be characterized by special achievements. As it turned out later, he was right. One of his little patients became a professor of astronomy and he solved a mistake in Newton’s work, and the girl under his medical care was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature several decades later (Elfriede Jelinek – ed.).
Despite the breakthrough of the Austrian pediatrician’s research, Asperger was not widely appreciated during his lifetime, and his findings were known to a fairly small group of scientists (this was mainly due to the limited scope of the publication, which was written in German and was not translated until the 90s) . It was enough, however, for his scientific career in Vienna to develop, and for his material and social situation to improve significantly. He found a permanent position at the University of Vienna (he stayed there for the next 20 years), and after the war he became director of a children’s clinic in the Austrian capital. He contributed to the publicity and dissemination of the idea of children’s villages – special places where children deprived of families and homes were taken care of; he himself managed such a center in the Austrian Hinterbrühl. He died in 1980 without having his most important work translated.
Asperger’s List
The fame of Hans Asperger, which was initiated by the work of the English researcher Lorna Wing (she coined the term “Asperger’s syndrome”) and the translator of his publication Uta Frith, attracted an increased interest in the figure of the Austrian physician. A pediatrician who had a career in the very center of the war aroused suspicions by his ties to the Spiegelgrund children’s clinic in Vienna, where the Nazi program of euthanizing sick and disabled children was carried out. It is estimated that almost 800 young patients died there, and hundreds of others were subjected to medical experiments. The Austrian regularly visited the clinic and observed the patients there.
According to the research of the Viennese professor Herwig Czech, Asperger not only knew perfectly well what the Spiegelgrund staff did, but also participated in qualifying young patients for euthanasia. The doctor was also supposed to refer his patients to the clinic. The Czech finds, among other things, a photo of a three-year-old girl who suffered from encephalitis and died three months after she was transferred to this hospital. Asperger was to recognize that there is no hope for the little patient, and because it is too heavy a burden for his mother, her torment should be shortened.
A pioneer in autism spectrum research reportedly prided himself on his pedagogical approach to disabled patients. His curative education it was based on the idea popular among the Nazis that autistic people could, under certain circumstances (for example in the case of labor shortages) prove to be excellent workers or soldiers. The doctor stated outright that some patients could be treated and even cured. However, the Czech found no evidence of Asperger’s “pedagogical optimism”. On the contrary – In his works, the Austrian stressed many times that “special measures” should be applied to terminally ill patients, especially those burdened with genetic diseases, and all this “out of a sense of great responsibility towards the German race”.
Edith Sheffer, a historian who also devoted several years to the analysis of Asperger’s writings and his fate, noted that while the Austrian pediatrician clearly cooled down the aspirations to classify children with social problems into specific disease entities a few years later, he himself made such diagnoses a few years later . In the writings written at the time when Hans Asperger applied for a promotion to associate professor, phrases such as “cruelty”, “sadistic features”, “autistic acts of malice” and “intelligent automatons” appear in relation to the children he studied.
These findings were a stark contrast to the previous beliefs about the achievements and intentions of Hans Asperger. Until now, it was believed that his theory of autistic psychopathy was a linguistically deliberate diagnosis designed to protect his young patients from Nazi eugenics, a kind of “Schindler’s psychiatric list”. The evidence gathered by the researchers suggests that if there was a list, it was more of a “life not worth living” list.
Today, in the world of science, there is still a discussion about the legitimacy of using the name of an Austrian physician in relation to the symptom complex of the autism spectrum. Many researchers believe that this ennoblement in the face of clear evidence of Asperger’s involvement in Nazi crimes is inappropriate. There are demands not so much to modify the term as to find an alternative name for it, as was the case with diseases that took their names from other Nazi doctors.
Others point to the fact that the term has become established not only in medicine, but also in the consciousness of millions of patients and their families, so changing it would not only confuse, but could also stigmatize people who identified with it.
Regardless of how the naming dispute ends, Hans Asperger will remain a figure as mysterious as he is controversial, and his undisputed achievements and contributions to the development of psychiatry will forever be overshadowed by his collaboration with the Nazis and actively professed racial hygiene.
The editorial board recommends:
- Who was Typhus Mary – America’s most formidable woman?
- Hitler’s doctor – a humble servant or a sophisticated killer?
- Sir Frederick Grant Banting – the orthopedist who saved the life of diabetics