Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna

Historian, author, and parent of a child diagnosed with autism, Sheffer (senior fellow, Inst. of European Studies, Univ. of California, Berkeley; Burned Bridge) delves into the story of Hans Asperger (after whom Asperger's syndrome is named). Asperger was the director of the Curative Education Clinic at the University of Vienna Children's Hospital in Vienna during the years leading up to World War II. A practicing Catholic and believed not to have joined the Nazis, Asperger has been favorably regarded. Sheffer makes clear that her subject was a minor figure in the child euthanasia program (unlike his contemporaries such as Heinrich Gross). However, Asperger not only worked but thrived within a system of mass killings, wherein increasing categorization of defects led to state-imposed murder. He labeled children as being of positive or negative worth, with the "unworthy" placed in Vienna's infamous Spiegelgrund institution. Sheffer's descriptions of the children and excerpts from their letters are heartbreaking.