Hans Asperger

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Johann "Hans" Friedrich Karl Asperger (born February 18, 1906 in Vienna ; † October 21, 1980 there ) was an Austrian pediatrician and curative educator . He is considered to be the first to describe Asperger's Syndrome , a form of autism, which was later named after him . Its role during the Nazi era is considered controversial.

As Asperger wrote most of his publications in German and they were rarely translated, his work was initially little known internationally. It was not until the 1990s that Asperger's Syndrome gained international recognition in specialist circles. The British psychologist Lorna Wing continued Asperger's research in the 1980s, defined the syndrome and named it after the person who first described it.

Life

Asperger was the eldest of three brothers, the middle one died shortly after birth, the youngest fell in 1942 in Russia . He wrote about his parents' house: “How was I brought up? With much love, even self-emptying of my mother, with great severity of my father. "After visiting a humanistic school he graduated from the University of Vienna a study of medicine . After receiving his doctorate in 1931, Asperger worked as an assistant at the children's clinic at the University of Vienna, where he also completed his habilitation in 1943.

From 1932 he headed the curative education department of the clinic. In the winter semester of 1943, Dr. med. habil. Hans Asperger was appointed lecturer in pediatrics with assignment to the medical faculty of the University of Vienna . One of his little patients was the later writer Elfriede Jelinek , “who [had] to undergo special educational therapy on Asperger's ward. Asperger was almost always present and read aloud to the children. ”Asperger was a consultant at the Vienna Main Health Office and an expert in special schools as well as for“ difficult, nervous or psychologically problematic children ”in normal schools.

From 1957 to 1962 Asperger was on the board of the Innsbruck children's clinic. In 1962 he became professor of paediatrics and head of the University Children's Hospital in Vienna, which he remained until his retirement in 1977. In 1967 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina Scholars' Academy .

In 1971 Asperger received the Gold Medal of Honor from the City of Vienna . In 1972 the University of Munich awarded him the title of Doctor medicinae honoris causa .

Hans Asperger was married to Hanna Kalmon since 1935. The couple had five children. Daughter Maria Asperger Felder is a specialist in child and adolescent psychiatry , specializing in the diagnosis of autism and practicing in Zurich .

Working on Autism

On October 3, 1938, he gave a lecture in the curative education department of the University Clinic Vienna in which he presented the characteristics of the "autistic psychopaths" using a case study. In 1943 Asperger submitted his habilitation thesis , which was published a year later: In 1944 Asperger published his description of Asperger's syndrome, which was later named after him.

He himself called the disorder "autistic psychopathy ". He borrowed the word "autistic" from Eugen Bleuler , who used it to describe certain characteristics of schizophrenia in order to illustrate "the narrowing of the person and their reactions to themselves and the associated limitation of re-actions to environmental stimuli ". The term “psychopathy” would best be translated today as “ personality disorder ”. Almost simultaneously with Asperger's publication, Leo Kanner's work on early childhood autism appeared , which was very similar to “Asperger's Syndrome”.

Asperger's publication contained the description of four boys (Fritz, Harro, Ernst and Hellmuth) whom he called "autistic psychopaths". The above had in common with average to high intelligence:

They were self-centered, unable to put themselves in other people's shoes and respond to them. In their emotional life the boys appeared disharmonious and in their often fearful behavior they lacked affective involvement. Asperger called them "little professors " because they could talk in detail about the area of ​​their special interest and often accumulated astonishing knowledge.

Asperger's in the Nazi era

Expert in the service of euthanasia

Asperger was a member of a seven-member commission that was supposed to categorize 200 disabled children according to their “educational ability” in order to be able to decide their fate. 35 children were classified as "hopeless cases" and subsequently transferred to Spiegelgrund , all of whom died there. There is no basis to accuse him of murder, because further steps were necessary before these children were murdered, but he was part of the legitimation of these murders and, as an expert, supported the classification into "usability levels".

While Asperger says he was an opponent of the National Socialists in the post-war years and the portrayals of his companions, contemporary documents and new research indicate that this was by no means the case. For example, a political assessment of Asperger issued by the Gaupersonalamt of the NSDAP -Gaueitung on November 1, 1940 reads: “In questions of race and sterilization legislation, he conforms to national socialist ideas. In terms of character and politics, he is considered impeccable. ”In addition, Asperger's role during the Nazi era in Austria was viewed critically by Herwig Czech and other historians.

According to Czech, there are indications that Asperger's “ child euthanasia ” in the youth welfare institution Am Spiegelgrund on the premises of the sanatorium and nursing home Am Steinhof on Baumgartner Höhe in Vienna (today's Otto Wagner Hospital ) gave several children to the I transferred the institution to the Spiegelgrund, where about 800 girls and boys were murdered. On the basis of Asperger's written statements, Czech found that Asperger's descriptions of the patients were "harder than those of the staff of the institution." The American historian Edith Sheffer also takes a very critical view of his role after 1933 in her book Asperger's Children . She explains that Asperger worked with the leaders of the child euthanasia program and referred young patients to the “euthanasia” facility “Am Spiegelgrund”. Asperger was involved in the transfer of at least 44 young people to the "Am Spiegelgrund" institution. Asperger was not directly involved in “Am Spiegelgrund”; according to Edith Sheffer's research, he did not administer any lethal medication himself. Referring to Sheffer's research and her book Asperger's Children - The Birth of Autism in the Third Reich , Astrid Viciano writes in the Süddeutsche Zeitung:

“Asperger was neither a staunch opponent nor a fanatical supporter of the Nazis. He was a devout Catholic and never joined the NSDAP. But his behavior is exemplary for the drifting of many people into complicity. "

Works (selection)

literature

  • Maria Asperger-Felder: Born to see, ordered to look ... Hans Asperger 1906–1980, life and work. In: Heilpädagogik, 49, H. 3, 2006, S. 2-11
  • Arnold Pollak (Ed.): In the footsteps of Hans Asperger. Focus on Asperger's Syndrome: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. Schattauer, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-7945-3122-6 ,
  • Tony Attwood : Asperger's Syndrome: A Parent's Guide. Trias / Thieme, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 978-3-89373-592-1 , p. 240
  • Manfred Berger : Hans Asperger. His life and work. In: Heilpädagogik, H. 4, 2007, pp. 29–32
  • Lorna Wing: Asperger's syndrome: a clinical account. In: Psychl Mne. 11: 115-129 (1981) PMID 7208735 .
  • Edith Sheffer: Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna . WW Norton & Company, New York 2018, ISBN 978-0-393-60964-6 . (German edition: Asperger's Children - The Birth of Autism in the "Third Reich" . Campus, Frankfurt a. M. 2018)
  • Uta Frith : Asperger and his syndrome . In Frith, ed .: Autism and Asperger Syndrome. Cambridge University Press , 1991, online 2009 doi: 10.1017 / CBO9780511526770.001 pp. 1-36

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Birth and baptismal register. Parish Altlerchenfeld, Vienna, 1906, fol. 17, number 50 ( digitized version , accessed on July 15, 2017).
  2. a b Hans Asperger: The "Autistic Psychopaths" in Childhood . In: Archives for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases . tape 117 , no. 1 , 1944, pp. 76-136 , doi : 10.1007 / bf01837709 ( autismus-biberach.com [PDF]).
  3. Lorna Wing: Asperger's syndrome: a clinical account. In: Psychl Mne. 11: 115-129 (1981) PMID 7208735 .
  4. ^ Rolf Castell: One Hundred Years of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009, ISBN 978-3-89971-658-0 , p. 99 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Daily issue. Volume 77. No. 281 of October 11, 1943, p. 3 ( online at ANNO ).
  6. Verena Mayer, Roland Koberg: Elfriede Jelinek. A portrait, Reinbek 2006, ISBN 978-3-498-03529-7 . P. 32.
  7. ^ Hans Weiss : Crime scene children's home. An investigation report. Deuticke, Vienna 2012 ISBN 978-3-552-06198-9 . P. 81 ff.
  8. Peter Schneider : [ “Autistic people feel 'different'” ] Interview in: Tages-Anzeiger from June 11, 2013
  9. Autism and Nazi Racial Laws in Austria 1938: Hans Asperger's defense of the "autistic psychopaths" against Nazi eugenics. (PDF; 128 kB) In: Die neue Sonderschule 47 (2002) 6, pp. 460–464. Retrieved December 26, 2010 .
  10. ^ Ferdinand Klein, Gerhard Neuhäuser: Curative education as therapeutic education. Munich 2006. pp. 36-37. ISBN 978-3-497-01863-5
  11. ^ Herwig Czech: Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and “race hygiene” in Nazi-era Vienna . In: Molecular Autism . tape 9 , no. 1 , April 19, 2018, ISSN  2040-2392 , p. 29 , doi : 10.1186 / s13229-018-0208-6 , PMID 29713442 , PMC 5907291 (free full text).
  12. ^ Digitized version of the document stored today in the Vienna City and State Archives at Der Standard .
  13. ^ Pediatrician and curative educator - How Hans Asperger was involved in National Socialism . In: Deutschlandfunk . ( deutschlandfunk.de [accessed July 15, 2018]).
  14. Christa Hager: Hans Asperger - "Medicine in the Twilight" . In: Autism. Wiener Zeitung . ( wienerzeitung.at [accessed on April 11, 2018]).
  15. Such, now in the City Archives Vienna handwritten transfer custody Asperger's, in which he called "permanent accommodation" of an almost three year old child "on" mirror base "" ( mirror base "absolutely necessary" referred underlined) as appearing as digitized at The standard.
  16. Herwig Czech: National Socialism, and "race hygiene" in Nazi-era Vienna . In: Molecular Autism . tape 9 , 2018, p. 29 ff ., doi : 10.1186 / s13229-018-0208-6 . [1] ; Rebecca Masko: Death Sentence: Unfit for Education . In: Jungle World , May 24, 2018, p. 16.
  17. Edith Sheffer: Asperger's Children. The birth of autism in the 'Third Reich' . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-593-50943-3 .
  18. Astrid Viciano: Euthanasia in the Nazi era, The Innocents house. sueddeutsche.de, November 18, 2018, accessed December 6, 2018 .