Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Insights
  • Published:

Pediatricians in Nazi Vienna, part 2: the perpetrators

Pediatric Research volume 95, pages 403–405 (2024)Cite this article

In Nazi-era Vienna, pediatricians were both victims and perpetrators. A prior article discussed the victims; this one will consider the perpetrators. Pediatrics was of central importance to the Nazis in implementing their “racially pure” society. Nazi pediatricians promoted the care of “fit” Aryan children and identified “unfit” children whose lives were deemed unworthy.1 The concept of “racial hygiene” was fundamental to Nazi medical ethics.2 Twenty German university institutes for racial hygiene were established before 1933.

Over 60 percent of non-Jewish Austrian physicians were members of the Nazi Party or one of its supporting organizations, with 18 percent joining the SA “brownshirts” and 8 percent the elite SS. These were higher proportions than among any other occupation in Austria and greater than Nazi membership among German doctors.3 The lure of Naziism for physicians may have arisen from pervasive antisemitism, added prestige, attraction to their role in promoting racial “purity,” and creating more job opportunities by eliminating Jews from the profession.2

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Memorial to pediatric victims at former Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna (photo by author).

References

  1. Czech, H. Paediatrics and curative paedagogy in national socialist Vienna. Wien. Klin. Wochenschr. 130, S329–S333 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Proctor, R. N. Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis, (Harvard, Cambridge, 1988).

  3. Reiter, M. Denazification—Reintegration—Political Fields of Action: NS-tainted Doctors after 1945. Wien. Klin. Wochenschr. 130, S310–S314 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Neuspiel, D. R. Pediatricians as victims and perpetrators under Nazi rule. CPQ Med. 13, 1–8 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Sheffer, E. Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna. (Norton, New York, 2018).

  6. Czech, H. Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and ‘race hygiene’ in Nazi-era Vienna. Mol. Autism 9, 1–43 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Neugebauer, W. The Austrian Resistance 1938-1945, trans. Nicholson, J. & Canepa, E. (Steinbauer, Vienna, 2014).

  8. Czech, H. Beyond Spiegelgrund and Berkatit: Human experimentation and coerced research at the Vienna School of Medicine, 1939 to 1945. In From Clinic to Concentration Camp: Reassessing Nazi Medical and Racial Research, 1933-1945. (Weindling, P., ed.), 138-162 (Routledge, London, 2017).

  9. Mayrhofer, H. The long shadows of the NS-period: Children with disabilities at the ‘Steinhof’ between 1945 and 1983. Wien. Klin. Wochenschr. 130, S314–S317 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Müller, M. The aftermath of the Anschluss on Austrian medicine from 1945 to today. Wien. Klin. Wochenschr. 130, S333–S335 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Ernst, E. A leading medical school seriously damaged: Vienna 1938. Ann. Int. Med. 122, 789–792 (1995).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Schütz, W., Erker, L., Rathkolb, O. and Sitte, H. H., eds. “Anschluss” March 1938: Aftermath on Medicine and Society. Wien. Klin. Wochenschr. 130, S279-S341, (2018).

  13. National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, updated 10 July 2023. https://www.nationalfonds.org/payments-by-the-national-fund

  14. Haque, O. S., De Freitas, J., Viani, I., Niederschulte, B. & Bursztajn, H. J. Why did so many German doctors join the Nazi Party? Int. J. Law Psychiatry 35, 473–479 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Haque, O. S. & Waytz, A. Dehumanization in medicine: Causes, solutions, and functions. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 7, 176–186 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Stern, A. M. Cautions about medicalized dehumanization. AMA J. Ethics 23, E64–E69 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Wright, J. L. et al. Eliminating race-based medicine. Pediatr 150, e2022057998 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Anderson, M. R., Moscou, S., Fulchon, C. & Neuspiel, D. R. The role of race in the clinical presentation. Fam. Med. 33, 430–434 (2001).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  19. Wynia, M. K. Professional civil disobedience—Medical-society responsibilities after Dobbs. N. Engl. J. Med. 387, 959–961 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

Funding

The author received no outside funding for this research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics, Atrium Health, Charlotte, NC, USA

    Daniel R. Neuspiel

Authors
  1. Daniel R. Neuspiel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

D.R.N. is the sole author of this manuscript and has not used any sources other than those listed as references. He has not submitted this manuscript to any other journal for publication.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel R. Neuspiel.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

D.R.N. reports no conflicts of interest regarding this research.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Neuspiel, D.R. Pediatricians in Nazi Vienna, part 2: the perpetrators. Pediatr Res 95, 403–405 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-023-02802-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-023-02802-z

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links