Austrian neurologists under the swastika: Julius Wagner-Jauregg-Walther Birkmayer-Franz Seitelberger

Abstract

There were three Austrian neurologists with connections to neurology in National Socialism who have been honored by the German Neurological Society (DGN) or its predecessor organizations with honorary membership. From 1928 to 1934 Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940) was head of the Austrian Alliance for National Regeneration and the Study of Heredity; in at least two publications he advocated eugenic measures and racial hygienic positions as defined by Nazi ideology. As aformer member of the Greater German People's Party (Großdeutsche Volkspartei), he applied for membership of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) afew months before his death. Walther Birkmayer (1910-1996) was an early member of the NSDAP, SA, SS and other Nazi organizations. As astaunch supporter of the "movement" he worked from 1938 in the Office of Racial Policy of the Gauleitung of Vienna. In lectures and publications he demanded or recommended forced sterilization for anumber of neurological diseases. Due to the classification of his grandmother as "non-Aryan", he had to give up his party and university posts and served as aWehrmacht physician. After some hard years immediately after the war, he was allowed to continue his career. As aco-discoverer of the effect of L‑DOPA on parkinsonism, he was awarded numerous honorary doctorates and honorary memberships. Franz Seitelberger (1916-2007), amember of an SS unit during the Nazi era, benefited in his research work from the 1950s onwards from specimens obtained in the course of neuropathological "concomitant research" to Nazi "euthanasia". It is to be welcomed that the Austrian Society of Neurology (ÖGN) will soon start ahistorical project investigating open questions related to the Nazi era.