Clinic in the shadow of Nazi crimes
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A working group around the Salzburg State Archives is concerned with the Christian Doppler Clinic and its role as the former state hospital before, during and after the Nazi regime.
In April 2015, the state parliament decided to have the state archives examine what questions were involved in researching and processing the role of the Christian Doppler Clinic and its predecessor, the state hospital, from a historical and sociological point of view in the period from 1920 to 1960 are to be answered urgently.
“This request for examination was renewed two years later, and the scientific working group, headed by the State Archives, was able to continue the research until it was completed and the report was handed over,” said Second State Parliament President Sebastian Huber.
400-page report
On Wednesday, State Archives Director Oskar Dohle, as the head of the working group, presented a more than 400-page report to the second President of the State Parliament, Sebastian Huber, on behalf of State Parliament President Brigitta Pallauf. “The report is an impetus for further scientific research in this direction,” said Huber.
Book is scheduled to appear in 2022
It is planned that a book of several hundred pages from the resulting report will be presented in the series of publications of the State Archives in the first half of 2022. “The preparatory work for this is already well advanced,” explains State Archives Director Oskar Dohle.
More than 50,000 files lifted
The origin of the project was that in 2015 the State Archives carried out historical patient files from a damp cellar on the grounds of the Christian Doppler Clinic and checked them for fungal infestation. There were around 27,800 patient files from the years 1849 to 1969 with more than 50,000 individual files in 632 archive boxes. In addition, 209 patient inventory books and notebooks, the medical ledger and ambulance cards were sent to the state archive.
Jackdaw: “respect for the victims”
“The work dealt with the question of how a psychiatric hospital functions in the shadow of the crimes of Nazi euthanasia,” said archive director Dohle. “The listing of the euthanasia victims was a special concern, as there are different details in the specific literature. It is an act of respect for the victims that everyone is named and thus before being forgotten, “said Dohle.