Lecture 8: Eugenics and Euthanasia: The Role of Science

1. Preliminary
   • Heck reading for Thursday: DON'T FALL BEHIND!
   • paper proposals due a week from Thursday
     Stefan Kühl: Nazi Connection; Martin Pernick, The Black Stork
   • Q2
2. Names & definitions
   • Eugenics ('good origin'): improvement of offspring (since Darwin, esp. since 1890s)
   • Euthanasia ('good killing'): killing the incurably & painfully ill; Nazi: killing racially unfit
   • T4: abbreviation for Tiergartenstr. 4, address of Reich Health Office
   • Dr. Jack Kevorkian and moral philosopher Peter Singer (Australia)
3. Film clip (15 mins.): "Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich" (M. Burleigh, 1992)
   • Hadamar, town north of Frankfurt, with large institution for the handicapped (1991 ceremony)
   • 1935: "What You Inherit," "Hereditarily Ill": for Party members and sympathizers
   • 1937: "Victims of the Past": commissioned by Hitler, shown in all movie theaters
   • 1939: "Existence without Life," "Mentally Ill": commissioned by T4 staff (start of gassings)
   • 1941: "I Accuse": T4-commissioned feature film; well-known, popular professional actors, 18 mio. viewers
   • Reader 10, pp. 31ff: text of SD report about the public reaction to "I accuse"
     • SA=Sturmabteilung, SS=Schutzstaffel, SD=Sicherheitsdienst ("security service," within the SS)
4. Issues
   • Role of science/scientific thinking in the Holocaust (compare to other genocides)
   • Role of the eugenics movement in the United States
   • Role of popular attitudes in the "euthanasia" program
   • Moral questions: the Pernkopf Anatomical Atlas (4 vols, 1943ff; 2vols in 1960s and 1980s)
     • Eduard Pernkopf in SS; Dean of Vienna University School of Medicine; Rector of University
     • 1377 corpses between 1938 and 1943