Caring and Killing

Nursing and Psychiatric Practice in Germany, 1931–1943

Thomas Foth, Hartmut Remmers

• Publisher: V&R Unipress
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9783847100621
• eBook ISBN:
  9783847000624
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Under the Nazi regime in Germany a calculated killing of chronic "mentally ill" patients took place. Nurses executed this program in their everyday practice. However, suspicions have been raised that psychiatric patients were also assassinated before and after the Nazi regime, suggesting that the motives for these killings must be investigated within psychiatric practice itself. This book highlights the mechanisms and scientific discourses in place that allowed nurses to perceive patients as unworthy of life. This study analyzes patient records as "inscriptions" that actively intervene in interactions in institutions and that create a specific reality on their own accord. The question is not whether the reality represented within the documents is true, but rather how documents worked in institutions and what their effects were. It is shown how nurses were actively involved in the construction of patients' identities and how these "documentary identities" led to the death of thousands of humans.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Body
• Preface
• Foreword
• Abstract
• List of tables
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Historical Background of the Killing of Sick Persons
• Chapter 3: The History of the Langenhorn Asylum from 1893 to 1945
• Chapter 4: Anna Maria Buller's First Admission in 1931: Analysis of the Record
• Chapter 5: Transfer to House 16 (March 1931)
• Chapter 6: The Intensification of the War against the Madness: Buller's Subsequent Admissions (1932–1943)
• Chapter 7: Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography