Life Unworthy of Life
A Timeline of the T4 Program: Lebensunwertes Leben
1920- E. Mann writes "Moralitiy and Strength"
in which he proposes a genetic 'engineering' program of 'weeding out' the sick and weak from hereditary lines. This argument was gaining widespread popularity in the US and Britain also in new moves towards 'Eugenics'. He also posited the idea of a 'health police' which would see to the removal of undesireable influences on the bloodlines. These arguments at the time found acceptance among emerging theories since the 1880s of Racial Science and in studies of Critical periods, imprinting, evolutionary theory, and Galtons investigations of 'optimal functioning', or inherited intelligence.
1920s-Theories of Karl Binding"
- Binding is notably considered the 'father' of Nazi approaches to the Eugenics and 'Euthanasia' movement, although there was little mercy in the deaths. He is credited with the expression "Lebensunwertes Leben" referring to the proposition that not all human life has value, and that for some, such as the retarded and mentally ill, mercy would required terminating their lives both for their sakes and for society's. He wrote a treatise, " The Authorization to end Life without Life Value", and argued in demonic sophistry, that life which did not share the same 'consciousness' of reality that 'most' share, was in fact not really life and could be done away with. He posited that since nature in primitive times, and in a Darwinian sense had 'weeded' out these individuals from the group who could not care for themselves or contribute to the group, that a willful decision to 'weed-out' these individuals was a natural process also, dismissing all concepts of intrinsic values of life. Binding claimed that our ideas of moral necessity or obligation are not natural and that 'modern' man created the burden of these individuals [modern would have to according to Foucalt and others extend back at least 3000 years.]1933 Sterilization Law:
All those with hereditary diseases such a s schizophrenia, chronic depression, Epilepsy,Blindness, Deafness and Mental infirmity [retardation] became subject to sterilization procedures. The reasoning behind such disease conditions such as epilepsy and chronic depression was the same as for others: an economic iniquity.
1933, November 26th: Law regarding "Social Ostracism"
Incorrigible criminals to be hused with the insane, social misfits and those who opposed the regime of the Third Reich. This populations came to include the chronically unemployed and alcoholic.
1935, October 18th: The Marriage Protection Law
This law regulated persons with hereditary diseases, requiring singleness and non-procreation. Hitler hoped within a generation to purify Aryan bloodlines of all social and physical 'disease'. The focus on youth, health and purity (although there was none at the top) became obligatory instead of a choice
1939 Hitler Summons Conti
- and Lammers. Conti is Secretary of State for Health, and Lammers Chief of the Chancellory of the Reich. Lammers was reluctant to implement a widespread euthanasia program, but Hitler argues for the deaths of thousands incarcerated in hospitals for the freeing up of physicians for the war effort in Poland, and hospital beds for wounded soldiers.Bouhler argues for 'making room' for the armed forces.
1940s- Konrad Lorenz supports Argument
-The famous ethologist, Konrad Lorenz, became a professor at the University of Konisberg and published in the Journal for the Advent of the Psychology of Character. he refers to
1947-Nuremberg Physician War Crimes Trials:
Brandt, Hitler's Medical Escort calls the T4 program 'humanitarian'.'More severe elimination of morally inferior human beings...natural forces which in the past eliminated the weak should be replaced by human/social organizational ones."- cited in Doctors of DeathLorenz was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his studies on imprinting and 'critical periods' around the time of birth, said later that he deeply regretted this earlier position.