The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany’s Twentieth Century

by Dagmar Herzog

The dark history of eugenic thought in Germany from the nineteenth century to today

Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi genocide claimed the lives of nearly three hundred thousand people diagnosed with psychiatric illness or cognitive deficiencies. Not until the 1980s would these murders, as well as the coercive sterilizations of some four hundred thousand others classified as “feeble-minded,” be officially acknowledged as crimes at all. The Question of Unworthy Life charts this history from its origins in prewar debates about the value of disabled lives to our continuing efforts to unlearn eugenic thinking today.

Drawing on a wealth of rare archival evidence, Dagmar Herzog sheds light on how Germany became the only modern state to implement a plan to eradicate cognitive impairment from the entire body politic. She traces how eugenics emerged from the flawed premise that intellectual deficiency was biologically hereditary, and how this crude explanatory framework diverted attention from the actual economic and clinical causes of disability. Herzog describes how the vilification of the disabled was dressed up as the latest science and reveals how Christian leaders and prominent educators were complicit in amplifying and legitimizing Nazi policies.

Exposing the driving forces behind the Third Reich’s first genocide and its persistent legacy today, The Question of Unworthy Life recovers the stories of the unsung advocates for disability rights who challenged the aggressive victimization of the disabled and developed alternative approaches to cognitive impairment based on ideals of equality, mutuality, and human possibility.

Genres: History, Audiobook

312 pages, Hardcover

Published October 8, 2024

About the author

Dagmar Herzog (born 1961) is Distinguished Professor of History and the Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has published extensively on the histories of sexuality and gender, psychoanalysis, theology and religion, Jewish-Christian relations and Holocaust memory, and she has edited anthologies on sexuality in the Third Reich, sexuality in twentieth-century Austria, and the Holocaust.

Reviews

[Natalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eugenics and the history of special education. Fascinating subject. Highly relevant to the times. Yet, not my favorite source for it.

Tbh, the author is simply way smarter than me. I felt like I had to translate each line because they have such a profound vocabulary. Plenty of folks are smarter than me, though. Maybe it won't bother you. And maybe the feeling of not being the smartest person in the room added to the ambiance given the subject.

[April · Rating 2 out of 5]

More complex historiography than I was looking for, so it might be an it's-not-the-book-it's-me situation. It somehow lost the string of other intertwining movements and issues to me and felt more like a connection of specific philosophies and moments. People without advanced vocabularies would do best to avoid this one.

[Fran Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was informative and interesting about disability rights activism but I thought it would be a bit more theory based

[Daniel]

The Devil's Bargain.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I expected, and not particularly good as a leisure read, but likely a good resource for academics and specialists.