‘Life Unworthy of Life’: ‘Euthanasia’ in the Third Reich. Inner Circle Seminar 176 (22 April 2012)



Karl Binding (1841–1920)

‘Life Unworthy of Life’

‘Euthanasia’ in the Third Reich

Paul Weindling
conducts
Inner Circle Seminar No.176
introduced by Anthony Stadlen
Sunday 22 April 2012
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Alfred Hoche (1865–1943)

This is the first of two seminars devoted to psychiatry and psychotherapy in the Third Reich.  In today’s seminar, we focus on psychiatry, and on its approach to those it regarded as ‘ballast existences’. (In the second seminar, Inner Circle Seminar No. 179 on 8 July 2012, we shall discuss psychotherapy, which was for persons regarded as going concerns.) During the second world war, the Nazis exterminated some 200,000 ‘mentally ill’ and physically disabled adults and children whom they categorised as ‘life unworthy of life’. The book Allowing the Extermination of Life Unworthy of Life (1920), by lawyer Karl Binding and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, had called for such so-called ‘euthanasia’ to be legalised. The National Socialists never did legalise it, but in 1939 Hitler in a secret memorandum decreed that the law against such ‘mercy deaths’ would not be enforced. Officially, in 1941, the programme was stopped. But doctors (such as the psychiatrist Irmfried Eberl), who had become expert in medical killing by gas, injection and starvation, were transferred from the ‘euthanasia’ programme to apply their skills in the death camps where Jews, Gypsies and others were exterminated (Eberl became commandant of Treblinka death camp). And ‘euthanasia’ continued until the end of the war, both as a ‘eugenic’ measure and to provide body parts for research.

Irmfried Eberl (1910–1948)



Paul Weindling, Wellcome Trust Research Professor in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University, is a world expert on Nazi eugenics, ‘euthanasia’ and human experiments, and on the medical nature of the Nazi exterminations. He is author of Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism 1870–1945 (1989) and many other books. Today, he will guide us through the history of the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ and discuss his latest findings.

Venue: Durrants Hotel, 26–32 George Street, Marylebone, London W1H 5BJ (http://www.durrantshotel.co.uk/)

Cost: Psychotherapy trainees £50, others £135, some bursaries; coffee, tea, biscuits, mineral water and liquorice allsorts included; payable in advance; no refunds unless seminar cancelled

Apply to: Anthony Stadlen, ‘Oakleigh’, 2A Alexandra Avenue, London N22 7XE

Tel: +44 (0) 20 8888 6857 E-mail: stadlen@aol.com

For further information on seminars, visit:
http://anthonystadlen.blogspot.com/

The Inner Circle Seminars were founded by Anthony Stadlen in 1996 as an ethical, existential, phenomenological search for truth in psychotherapy. They have been kindly described by Thomas Szasz as ‘Institute for Advanced Studies in the Moral Foundations of Human Decency and Helpfulness’. But they are independent of all institutes, schools and colleges.