Waltraud Häupl

Waltraud Häupl (born 1935 in Vienna ) is an Austrian art teacher who wrote three standard works on the murder of children and young people in Austria by the Nazi regime - as part of the so-called National Socialist Racial Hygiene Program .

Life

Häupl completed a degree in painting, graphics, art history and history at the University of Vienna . Until her retirement, she taught as an art teacher at general secondary schools and worked in adult education. At the end of the 1990s she happened to find out that her little sister Annemarie Danner had been a victim of child euthanasia in the Am Spiegelgrund youth welfare institution .

plant

Memorial for the children from Spiegelgrund

“There was authority to kill in the youth welfare institution Am Spiegelgrund ”, so Waltraud Häupl in her comprehensive documentation about the institution doctor Heinrich Gross and the children from Spiegelgrund . With these words began the detailed appraisal of the respected surgeon and human rights activist Werner Vogt of the first book by Waltraud Häupl in the daily newspaper Die Presse . Vogt describes it as a children's book of the dead and continues: "Driven by the certainty that her sister Annemarie was murdered in the youth welfare institution" Am Spiegelgrund "during the Nazi era, Waltraud Häupl has put together a comprehensive victim documentation. She spreads out hundreds of children's medical histories over hundreds of pages, all of which ended not with discharge but with certain death. "

Friedrich Zawrel , himself an inmate at Spiegelgrund, who only survived by luck and chance, wrote the epilogue for Häupl's book. The author documented, case by case, how patients made sick, were overdosed with barbiturates , and how alleged natural causes of death - mostly pneumonia, occasionally intestinal inflammation - were communicated to relatives. Häupl also described how brains and other body parts were preserved in jars and used for ostensibly scientific research, even long after the end of the Nazi regime. Many documents were destroyed. Nevertheless, Häupl managed to name 802 victims in her book. The importance of her book on The Murdered Children from Spiegelgrund was immediately recognized. In the FAZ, Hans-Jürgen Döscher reviewed , Der Spiegel devoted a detailed article to the book and author,

Her second book was published in 2008, her third at the end of 2012, dedicated to 1,066 victims between the ages of 26 days and 19 years, who were gassed and injected to death in the killing facility in Hartheim Castle and in the nearby Niedernhart sanatorium and nursing home . The Wiener Zeitung summed it up: "Waltraud Häupl's new book is a shocking and important document about one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century, which for a long time was suppressed and almost hushed up."

With her biographical contributions, the author also supported the Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg and Stolpersteine ​​for Wiener Neustadt projects . Based on the medical files that she had compiled and evaluated, the Vienna City and State Archives designed the exhibition Child Euthanasia in Vienna 1940-1945 in Gasometer D in 2005 . In 2002, Waltraud Häupl played a key role in the burial of 600 urns and the remains of the Spiegelgrund victims in an honorary grave in the City of Vienna . It was the largest child funeral in the Republic of Austria. "Requested for the first time in 1979, refused for two decades, then, finally, enforced by City Councilor Elisabeth Pittermann ."

She gave numerous lectures on the topic, visited schools and was available for interviews. In 1999 she received a high award from the State of Vienna for her many years of cultural and social commitment between Austria and the former Eastern Bloc countries.

Quote

“Many of the victims were neither“ terminally ill, nor did they ask for a 'gentle death'. They were at the mercy of their murderers and could not defend themselves against sadism and blind obedience. They were blamed for genes that allegedly led to physical or mental ailments by those who should have alleviated or healed their pain and anxiety. "

- Waltraud Häupl : Personal prologue to the third book, 2012

Book publications

• The murdered children from Spiegelgrund. Commemorative documentation for the victims of Nazi child euthanasia in Vienna. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag 2006, ISBN 978-3-205-77473-0 .
• The organized mass murder of children and young people in the Ostmark 1940–1945. Memorial documentation for the victims of Nazi euthanasia. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag 2008, ISBN 3-205-77729-8 .
• Traces of the murdered children and young people in Hartheim and Niedernhart. Memorial documentation for the victims of Nazi euthanasia. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag 2012, ISBN 978-3-205-78776-1 .

Article (selection)

• “Under their care ...” In: Eberhard Gabriel, Wolfgang Neugebauer (ed.): On the history of Nazi euthanasia in Vienna. From forced sterilization to murder. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag 2002, pp. 32–39.

Award

• 1999: Gold Medal of Honor of the State of Vienna

Individual evidence

1. ^ Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung - Political Education Forum Saxony-Anhalt: "The murdered children from Spiegelgrund". Victims of Nazi euthanasia on children
2. ↑ ^{a b} Werner Vogt: Waltraud Häupl: The murdered children from Spiegelgrund , Die Presse , accessed on July 24, 2015.
3. ↑ Menschenalter.de: Waltraud Häupl: "The murdered children from Spiegelgrund" , accessed on July 24, 2014.
4. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: Sleepers. Euthanasia in Austria , FAZ, September 12, 2006
5. ^ Marion Kraske: Nazi child euthanasia , Der Spiegel, October 11, 2006.
6. ↑ Rainer Mayerhofer: Häupl, Waltraud: Traces on the murdered children and young people in Hartheim and Niedernhart , Wiener Zeitung, January 28, 2013.
7. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg , accessed on July 24, 2015.
8. ^ Marianne Enigl : So to say eliminated , profile , March 19, 2005.
9. ↑ Red traces: Group 40 - Spiegelgrund Memorial , July 17, 2014.
10. ↑ enken.at: Organized mass murder of children and young people during the Nazi era , accessed on July 24, 2015.
11. ↑ Quoted from Antonia Barboric: Die Liste , Die Presse , June 22, 2012.

Web links

• Literature by and about Waltraud Häupl in the catalog of the German National Library