1931

Pediatrician Franz Hamburger, anti-science, anti-Semitic proto-Nazi and then (in 1934) Nazi who replaced von Pirquet as Director of University of Vienna Children’s Hospital in 1929, appoints Hans Asperger to staff as postdoctoral advisee and placed him in the Curative Education Clinic in 1932. Asperger idolized him (Sheffer, 41-44). In April-May 1934, Asperger served an internship with Paul Schröder at Leipzig University ‘s psychiatric hospital, where he became an enthusiastic convert to Nazi-fied Gemüt and Nazi approach to development and psychopathology (Sheffer, 62, 67-68). In late 1941, Asperger, with Max Gundel (director of Spiegelgrund), Erwin Jekelius (med. Director of Spiegelgrund), and Franz Hamberger, founded Vienna Society for Curative Education, successor to German Society for Child Psychiatry and Curative Education (127ff.). As co-founder, Asperger “was collaborating with three top perpetrators of Child killing in Vienna. . . as he admitted later in life, he was fully aware of the euthanasia program . . . . After all, the Vienna Society was run by notorious Spiegelgrund leaders” (137-138). Asperger “publicly encouraged his colleagues to transfer ‘difficult cases’ of children to Spiegelgrund – and he followed his own recommendations. . . . Asperger had a hand in the transfer of dozens of children to their deaths at Spiegelgrund ,” e.g., all 35 youths transferred by a seven-member Vienna commission he served on in 1942 (141-142).