Complicity in Vienna: Science and systemic denial after 1938

Abstract

Summary Despite over seventy years of independent inquiries, institutional investigations, and ongoing scholarship in contemporary history, Austria continues to uncover tangible evidence that members of their medical and scientific communities shielded their own genocidal activities from the Nazi era until the end of the 20th century. To what extent does this point toward a cultural complicity, conscious or not, with compromised figures like Eduard Pernkopf or Heinrich Gross? A whole new generation of mostly Austrian researchers have challenged the “avoidance imperative” with increasing determination though often under international pressure. Yet the intransigence with which the Viennese academy safeguarded Nazi murderers in their midst after 1945 and arguably until today, compels us to re-examine what is known – and what is not. The tacit amnesty of Austrian Nazi scientists, whose story is less well-known than their German counterparts, may speak to a deeper malaise in the construction of Austrian national identity.