Deaf People in Hitler's Europe

Teacher-Collaborators

121 Teacher-Collaborators Teacher-Collaborators 121 Horst Biesold Translated by William Sayers The testimony I gathered suggests that educators in Germany’s special schools actively supported racial hygiene measures against deaf people; they did not share the “rescue mentality” claimed by historians for special education teachers.1 It is worthwhile to begin this discussion by reviewing the influence of the director of the German training institute for teachers of the deaf and the directors of regional institutions for the deaf on teachers’ beliefs and actions. The Training Institute for Teachers of the Deaf in Berlin-Neukölln The State Institution for the Deaf at Berlin-Neukölln is the oldest institution for deaf pupils in Prussia.2 It was founded in 1788 by the son-in-law of Samuel Heinicke, the founder of German deaf education .3 In 1811 it also became the training institute for Prussian teachers.4 Over time, other provinces began to send their teacher trainees to Berlin-Neukölln. The school’s principal also served as director of the teacher training program. Gotthold Lehmann assumed this dual position in 1924. Six years later he reported that the training program had twenty-eight candidates and that “the admissions register, which was begun in 1874,” had reached candidate number 487.5 Lehmann was responsible for making proposals for future university courses to the Prussian State Ministry for Science, Art, and Public Education, and for supervising payments to the institute’s faculty.6 The financial accounts for fiscal This chapter is reprinted by permission of the publisher, from Horst Biesold, Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany, trans. William Sayers (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1999), 42–83. 122 Horst Biesold year 1930 and for second-year students during the winter term of 1931–1932 provide information about “special lectures” on professional themes. For example, a Professor Flatau lectured on the physiology of voice and speech.7 Early during the period of the Nazi Party’s expansion of power and the initiation of its race policies, Lehmann proposed eugenicsrelated topics for participants in the first-year program, such as “Introduction to the Theory of Heredity” and “Exercises in the Science of Heredity.” Course topics proposed for the years 1932–1938 “for the scientific instruction of participants in the program for the training of teachers of the deaf” illustrate Lehmann’s indoctrination of a generation of teachers with National Socialist racial ideas. Among the courses listed were the following: • Eugenics • The science of human heredity and German race cultivation • Contemporary problems in the maintenance of public welfare (heredity, eugenics, sterilization, conservation) • The theory of heredity and race hygiene • Hereditary diseases • General studies of deafness, the collaboration of the schools for the deaf in the implementation of the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases • Environment and hereditary predisposition • Views on race hygiene • The theory of human heredity as the basis for race hygiene8 Evidently, Lehmann’s proposals were accepted by the Prussian State Ministry for Science, Art, and Public Education, although the training programs were canceled by the Ministry for 1933–1935 and 1938–1940.9 The alignment of the teacher training institute’s curriculum with National Socialist goals was intentional. Lehmann was a member of the National Socialist Teachers’ Confederation even before the Nazis ’ coordination and integration of the Union of German Teachers of the Deaf, and, according to a colleague from Berlin, he shared the 123 Teacher-Collaborators National Socialist point of view.10 Furthermore, Lehmann encouraged the implementation of the sterilization law among the students of his institution. There are reliable accounts from those affected that he took the initiative in informing authorities about them and that he sought to influence parents.11 The latter charge is substantiated by the case of a deaf woman, born in 1921 and ordered to be sterilized when she was fifteen. Lehmann’s letter to the girl’s mother is reproduced in figure 1.12 Her mother protested the sterilization order in a letter to Lehmann on April 15, 1936. At the close of her letter, she wrote: “I cannot sign this [the consent form].”13 In the end, however, the deaf girl was sterilized anyway. Lehmann’s letter (see fig. 2) reminded the mother that parental consent was not necessary.14 One of Lehmann’s former students has described how force was used when pupils resisted sterilization. Just turned fourteen, he was to...