[From South Tyrol to Württemberg: the "resettlement" of South Tyrolean psychiatric patients within the Germano-Italian Option Agreement of 1939]

Gesnerus. 2012;69(2):297-329.
[Article in German]

Abstract

Object of this article is the procedure of the transport of South Tyrol patients to the South Wuerttemberg asylums Zwiefalten und Schussenried as well as to some extent to the former asylum of Weissenau near Ravensburg in 1940 and 1942. Attention is focused on the pioneering state pre-negotiations, the so-called option treaties between the German Reich and Fascist Italy as part of the general aspect of National Socialist bio-Politics.The treatment of these South Tyrol patients in the asylums themselves, as well as their fate will be put into the context of the resettlement actions at the margins of the "Third Reich", which started in 1939 and widely affected the European continent. By presenting the abuse of medical patients in the aim to solve the political problems having occurred after bio-political goals had been set into practice, this study offers new material to the history of National Socialist psychiatry, as well as to National Socialist Foreign Policy in the case of Italy.

Publication types

  • English Abstract
  • Historical Article

MeSH terms

  • Euthanasia / history*
  • Germany
  • History, 20th Century
  • Hospitals, Psychiatric / history*
  • Humans
  • Italy
  • Mental Disorders / history*
  • National Socialism / history*
  • Patient Transfer / history*
  • Psychiatry / history*
  • Transportation of Patients / history*