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The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany's Twentieth Century - Dagmar Herzog, PhD (Webinar live on-line)
2025-26 Friday Night Guest Lecture Series
These days, the topic of intellectual disability seems frequently to function as a conversation stopper, and yet studying its history can teach us much we need to know about the seductive appeal of fascisms both past and present. The Question of Unworthy Life resituates the hundredthousandfold Nazi coercive “eugenic” sterilizations and “euthanasia” murders of people with cognitive impairments and psychiatric diagnoses in a longer history of lethal malice toward the vulnerable that was erotically charged already since the 1890s and inseparable from the promise of libidinal pleasures that facilitated the Nazi ascent to political power. On the basis of a wealth of rare archival evidence, Dr. Dagmar Herzog revisits this grim history, exploring also the ambivalent enmeshment of those professionals in medicine, religious charity, and pedagogy principally responsible for provision of supports. But she recovers as well singularly courageous counter-voices at every step and, taking the story into the 2020s, chronicles the uneven, protracted battles to establish a revolutionary new image of the human and novel practices of education and care.
Target Audience
____x__ Introductory ___x___ Intermediate __x____ Advanced
Learning Objectives
Attendees will be able to identify the key historical factors driving the rise of eugenic attitudes and policies targeting people with intellectual and psychological impairments in pre-Nazi Germany.
Attendees will be able to explain both perpetrator and bystander involvement in the Nazi “euthanasia” murders of people with disabilities, and the relationship of Nazi “euthanasia” to the Holocaust of European Jewry.
Attendees will be able to describe the long-term impact of antidisability hostility in the postwar era, but also to analyze and assess the rise of courageous and creative counter-voices and projects advancing dignity and justice.
Dagmar Herzog, PhD, is Distinguished Professor of History and the Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her prior books include Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe (Wisconsin), Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes (Cambridge), Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge), and Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton).
Austen Riggs Center Inc. adheres to the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Medical Education. All those at Austen Riggs Center involved in the planning of this activity, including the presenter(s) listed above, report they have no relevant financial relationships with an ineligible company*.
The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the presenter(s) and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the Austen Riggs Center.
* An ineligible company is any entity whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.
Available Credit
- 1.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™
ACCME - As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for a maximum of 1.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
- 1.50 APA
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for 1.50 continuing education credit(s) (CE) for psychology. Continuing Education (CE) credits for psychologists are provided through the co-sponsorship of the American Psychological Association (APA) Office of Continuing Education in Psychology (CEP). The APA CEP Office maintains responsibility for the content of the programs.
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- 1.50 ASWB-ACE
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Austen Riggs Center, Inc is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0843.
- 1.50 Contact Hours/ ParticipationA certificate of attendance for all Learners.