The Question of Unworthy Life

»The disabled were not ›forgotten‹ victims, but rather aggressively repudiated ones.«

This book is an experiment. It attempts to write an intellectual history of intellectual disability by tracing debates about the value of disabled life as they have raged over the last 150 years. The great abyss of this era was an almost unimaginable mass murder project that has a complex prehistory and an astonishingly long aftermath. Unlearning eugenics has proven to be an extraordinarily difficult process that has not yet been completed to this day.

Dagmar Herzog describes the recurring conflicts over the interpretation of facts and the practical consequences to be drawn from them. In these politically and emotionally charged disputes, concepts from medicine and education were mixed with religious and theological ideas, but also with those about work and sexuality, human vulnerability and interdependence.

How should we think and feel about fellow citizens with a wide variety of cognitive impairments and psychiatric diagnoses? How should we deal with them as a society? In the arguments that were carried out about these questions, Germans also struggled to define their self-image as a nation.

»Positively gripping. The Question of Unworthy Life presents in clear, concise, and compelling prose an extraordinarily dramatic and moving story, and one of profound human and political significance. Ambitious in scope, incisive in analysis, concise in exposition, and deeply researched, this powerful book will further cement Herzog’s stature as one of the most brilliant historians of Germany and Europe in her generation.« Edward Ross Dickinson, University of California, Davis

»This remarkable book traces the long history of the idea that human beings should be understood and treated according to a hierarchy of worth, the solidification of that murderous idea into cultural common sense, and the very recent and ongoing efforts in Germany to advocate for the value of disabled life. Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, The Question of Unworthy Life is a stunning achievement.« Regina Kunzel, Yale University

»With this powerful book, Dagmar Herzog offers us a lucid, painstakingly nuanced, and ultimately hopeful study of the long durée of eugenic politics in modern Germany. Both unsparing and compassionate, Herzog’s incisive analysis reveals the durability of prejudice, cruelty, and condescension toward the disabled across time and regimes but also chronicles the unstinting efforts of some dedicated professionals and activists to recognize the humanity of even the most severely disabled. Confronting the hardest questions about the value of human life, Herzog insists on the possibility of change over time.« Atina Grossmann, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

»A sweeping, nuanced, and chilling intellectual history of German understandings of cognitive disability across the twentieth century. Herzog analyzes the persistence of eugenic thinking among those who denied the full and equal humanity of the disabled, blamed intellectual impairment on heredity rather than accident or environment, and ranked worth according to usefulness. This is a major contribution to the history of eugenics and medicine, disability history, and ongoing debates about continuities and ruptures in German history.« Mary Nolan, New York University

»Dagmar Herzog’s magisterial conceptual and cultural history is a major scholarly achievement. Her broad canvas illuminates how, in the 1920s, eugenics became firmly rooted in religious care communities and inscribed in the German lexicon. She extends her powerful narrative from the postwar trials to the late 1970s, when social movements began to dislodge the hegemony of this vicious concept and alter the perceptions and care of disabled people. Comprehensive and compassionate, The Question of Unworthy Life is an incomparable guide to this dark episode of German history.« Anson Rabinbach, Princeton University