Respected Doctor Hans Asperger Who Gave Name To Form Of Autism 'Assisted In Murder Of Disabled Children'

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The formerly respected doctor who gave his name to a form of autism has been implicated in the killing of disabled children by the Nazis.

Campaigners have reacted with shock to a report which claims to have ¬uncovered a dark past of Austrian ¬paediatrician Hans Asperger, who first coined the term “autistic”.

Documents uncovered by an Austrian medical historian suggest Professor Asperger participated in the Nazi’s murderous euthanasia programme.

Asperger is said to have referred profoundly ¬disabled children to the ¬notorious Am Spiegelgrund clinic, where “unworthy” lives were snuffed out.


An estimated 789 ¬children, many with severe mental ¬problems, were systematically killed at the Vienna clinic, mostly by lethal ¬injection and gassing.

Others died from disease and starvation, or were subjected to sick medical experiments.

Asperger syndrome is marked by an impaired ability to interact socially and tends to affect people of higher intelligence.

The National Autistic Society said it would be consulting autistic people and their families before considering any change of name for Asperger’s.

Prof Asperger used the term “autistic psychopathy” to describe the condition of four children under his care in 1944.

Herwig Czech, of the University of Vienna, trawled through previously unexamined files and patient records from the Nazi era about Prof Asperger.

He said: “What emerges is that Asperger successfully sought to accommodate himself to the Nazi regime and was rewarded with career opportunities.”

Carol Povey, of the UK National Autistic Society, said: “We expect these findings to spark a big conversation among the 700,000 autistic people in the UK and their families, particularly those who identify with the term Asperger.”

Co-editor of the report Prof Joseph Buxbaum, of Mount Sinai Medical School, in New York, said: “Asperger was not just doing his best to survive in ¬intolerable conditions, but was complicit with his Nazi superiors in targeting ¬society’s most vulnerable people.”

Adolf Hitler’s “Aktion T4” euthanasia programme led to the deaths of 300,000 incurable and severely disabled children.

One in 100 have autism in the UK.