Am Spiegelgrund

Memorial to the victims of Spiegelgrund (Hôpital Am Steinhof, Vienne) © Jean-Pierre Dalbéra.

Considered one of the theatres of the Third Reich’s euthanasia program Am Spiegelgrund is a space where Nazi impact on paedopsychiatry is on display.

   In force as from 1933 upon Hitler’s rise to power, his public health policy was structured around eugenics; it solidified at the heart of the forced sterilisation law and later inspired its euthanasia programme. This programme chiefly targeted children although, adults were also affected. The scheme was founded in the drive for a German Volk, that is the creation of a people of “perfect” types bereft of any flaw be they physical, mental, social or even hereditary, as well as of a Gemüt (theorised and defined as a person’s connectedness or integration into the German community) and operated from psychiatric centres such as Am Spiegelgrund.

   The late 19^th century eugenics policy posited by Sir Francis Galton got enforced in Austria by Nazi Germany upon its annexation in 1938. Austria and more precisely its capital, Vienna thus played its part in the mass murders based on racial and social criteria during the Second World War as a result of this eugenics policy. It is in the framework of this public health policy that 24 July 1940 saw the inauguration of the Spiegelgrund Municipal Young People's Care Centre. Situated at the north-east of Vienna, Am Spiegelgrund became one of the most important psychiatric centres within a vast network of children homes, special schools and hospitals. The facility counted several units among which units 15 and 17 became known by the people at large as the death units.

   The study of the system adopted within Am Spiegelgrund is key to understanding this eugenics policy for this institution developed the “psychiatric assessments of competence” defining deficiencies for the purpose of the 3rd Reich. Now, it must be specified that these assessments revolved essentially around determining the social origins of the children held at Am Spiegelgrund. It turns out that 40% of Spiegelgrund’s dead children were considered as hailing from society’s lower classes. Their social status being primarily hidden behind the attribution of psychiatric diagnosis that decreed whether they lived or died.

   Living conditions were tough: cold, hunger, corporal punishments and medical experiments complemented the euthanasia programme. Thus Am Spiegelgrund is a place where 789 children died 1940 and 1945, and thus the second largest euthanasia centre in the Reich, recording the highest mortality rate in “specialised paediatric services”. The cause of death was disguised, the children’s death certificates mention pneumonia – in fact caused by barbiturates overdose. The sedative power of these barbiturates stretched to anaesthetising the individual affecting their breathing functions.

   The implication of health professionals as well as that of the public at large was crucial in the implementation of this euthanasia policy. Indeed, parents were among the first actors of the policy. Some were aware when surrendering their child, of what was actually going on. Besides, everybody also got to find out notably through protests from the pulpit.   

   Physicians and psychiatrists would play a major part towards this policy, for Am spiegelgrund’s health personnel included its most eminent proponents such as Doctors Erwin Jekelius,  Ernst Illing, Franz Hamburger, or even Hans Asperger. Some answer for the death of children, notably as a result of experiments conducted on them. The most significant example is that of Heinrich Gross, who collected hundreds of children brains in jars in Am Spiegelgrund’s cellars. These actors, complicit through their action, took a direct or indirect part in this euthanasia policy as well as in the running of Am Spiegelgrund where the killings went on until 1945.

   One might be tempted to think that these activities came to an end with the end of the war and the arrival of Soviet troops in the Austrian capital in 1945. However, Am Spiegelgrund stayed put complete with its medical team and some of the child inmates. Not before 1950 would the facility be closed. In 2002 a memorial was installed to honour those children whose remains are buried within Am Spiegelgrund making it a place of remembrance.

Read more in the dictionary : Asperger - Intelligence test 

Read the paper in French : Spiegelgrund