Disability Studies and the Legacies of Eugenics

Sunday July 11, 2004, Halle, Kempinski Hotel

Discussion on Deaf People in Nazi Germany
Horst Biesold, Crying Hands selection

(Transcript originally completed for accessiblity purposes and should not be considered a verbatim account of the proceedings. This transcription is meant to represent a general sense and may include gaps and mistaken information. Please request permission to quote)

It was late (already 9:15 p.m.) when we began this discussion in the basement of the Kempinski Hotel after our first long day of travel together. About half of the total group was missing from travel fatigue but we had already put off discussing this selection for 3 days and the group felt it important to “move on” now lest we get further behind with our readings and discussions.

Brenda Brueggemann began by offering the following context:

A. Why deaf people/deaf studies is interested in this period/issue/ intersection:

1. part of the list of “lebensunwerten Leben” –listed among the 8 categories of undesirable people
2. legacy of A.G. Bell & his involvement in eugenics—specifically targeted deaf people wanting to prove that when deaf people marry other deaf people, they tend to produce deaf children.
3. currently the target of several international genetics institutes focusing just on deafness—and their fear of the way Deaf culture will be taken from them in this direction as well
4. But also, their pride in their own genetic deaf histories (DOD—deaf of deaf people are almost always the inherent leaders of the culture)

B. Previous and forthcoming connected events & publications related to deafness and eugenics/genetics:

• 1998 Gallaudet University Press Institute (GUPI) on “Deaf People in Nazi Germany).
  
• 1998 GUPI conference is now in a published collection (Gallaudet UP 2003), edited by Gallaudet historians, Donna Ryan and John Schuchman
  
• Donna Ryan also has a piece coming out from journal of oral history on getting some of the testimonials (how it was done and the issues involved)
  
• One of the most interesting pieces in his book is the one about the 1932 film created by one of the national (Deaf) German organizations, REGEDE, that set out to show how deaf people in Germany were, above all else, good Germans. Verkannte Menschen means “the misjudged/misunderstood people” Film ends with very Aryan young deaf man saluting Hitler
  
• 1998 GUPI conference also seeds an August 2001 panel at the U.S. Holocaust Museum on “Deaf People in Nazi Germany”
  
• 3 papers read at this event available at the Holocaust Museum website
  2 survivor narratives are not, however, transcribed there!?
  
• April 2003 GUPI conference on “Deafness, Disability, and Genetics”
  This conference & proceedings/papers will be published in Summer 2004 issue of Sign Language Studies

After these opening context notes, our discussion touched on these points and issues as we worked around the Biesold excerpt:

• Deafness and its (uneasy, and troubling for deaf people) alliance with mental retardation

• Deaf people’s pride in their genes :
wanting to have deaf children,
wanting to marry other deaf people,
putting Deaf-of-Deaf (DOD) at the top of the Deaf-world hierarchy

• The still quite patriarchal (and xenophobic) world of Deaf culture

• Deaf people (especially Deaf Americans) working hard to present themselves and perform as “hyper-American”—their passion for sports and beauty pageants as examples

• A.G. Bell, deaf people, and his advocacy for “positive eugenics”

Sharon L. Snyder, Ph. D.,
Director, "Legacies of Eugenics" Summer Institute, Einstein Forum
Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Ph. D. Program in Disability Studies
Department of Disability and Human Development
University of Illinois at Chicago (MC 626)
1640 W. Roosevelt Rd. #207
Chicago IL 60608-6904 U.S.A.
E-mail: ssnyder@uic.edu Phone: (312) 413-1975 (Voice) Fax: (312) 996-0885