The Jewish studies department launched a series of lectures regarding the Holocaust beginning with two by Drs. Edith Sheffer and Herwig Czech on Oct. 4 at McKenna Theatre, moderated by professor Venise Wagner of the journalism department. Both lecturers presented the subject and controversy of autism and Hans Asperger’s association with the Nazi regime during […]
By EMILY DONALDSON The Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger first used the term “autistic psychopathy” to describe the group of characteristics now recognized as autism in a 1938 paper delivered under the recent shadow of Hitler’s Anschluss. “Asperger’s syndrome” was named for him, posthumously, in the early 1980s, and entered the DSM as a standalone diagnosis in 1994. […]
Wiener Library Blog Posted by Terry Philpot In 1940 34 year-old Hans Asperger was an unknown delegate among the hundreds who attended the first (and only) conference of the German Society for Child Psychiatry and Curative Education in Vienna. Of the 14 speakers only three (two of whom were Swiss) are known not to have […]
by Sally Blundell Austrian paediatrician Hans Asperger was complicit in Nazi eugenics, sending disabled children to their death. When University of California historian Edith Sheffer was told her 17-month-old son, Eric, was on the autism spectrum, she decided to find out more about the man whose name has since been given to her child’s condition. She […]
The Austrian pediatrician for whom Asperger syndrome is named doesn’t deserve the honour of that title, because he collaborated with Nazis to euthanize children, according to a professor. Hans Asperger conducted pioneering research into what he termed “autistic psychopathy” during the Second World War in Vienna, but was also involved in screening children in line with Nazi policies […]
After UC Berkeley historian Edith Sheffer learned that her 17-month-old son had autism, she did what many parents in her situation do: She read everything she could. And like many parents, Sheffer soon came across stories about Hans Asperger. In autism circles, he’s long been known as the pioneering Viennese doctor whose name became synonymous […]