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Hans Asperger

WGNO News: Author who explored link between autism and Nazism to speak at WWII Museum Thursday

edith sheffer new orleans NGNO news

Author and Historian Edith Sheffer will visit the National WW II Museum Thursday evening to discuss her new book that uncovers the links between autism and Nazism. The book, “Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna,” was released May 1 and explores how a diagnosis common today – autism affects over 2 million people in the […]

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The Atlantic: Autism’s Dark Roots in Nazi Vienna

edith sheffer aspergers children book review atlantic magazine

“For success in science and art,” the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger once proposed, “a dash of autism is essential.” For success in medicine during the heyday of the Third Reich, as Edith Sheffer’s account of his career shows, the requirement was different. More than a dash of Gemüt—which Nazi psychiatrists defined as commitment to community (just what […]

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The New York Times: Once Viewed as a Savior of Children, Hans Asperger Is Now Called a Nazi Collaborator

new york times review of aspergers children book by edith sheffer

Edith Sheffer has written a book that defies easy categorization — an appropriate, if perhaps inadvertent, response to her fascinating and terrible subject matter. In “Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna,” she shows how the Third Reich’s obsession with categories and labels was inextricable from its murderousness; what at first seems to […]

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The Canadian Jewish News: ASPERGER’S LINKS TO NAZIS CAUSES SOCIETY TO CONSIDER NAME CHANGE

Shocking new revelations that the namesake of Asperger’s syndrome was an accomplice to the Nazi murder of children has spurred the Asperger’s Society of Ontario (ASO) to considering changing its name, but it is encountering resistance. Detailed information that has come to light over the past few months about Dr. Hans Asperger has “certainly raised […]

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