Social Workers Expelled or Murdered in Austria

In 1912, the first training programme to become a social worker began in Vienna, and further training opportunities followed. With the annexation of Austria by the German Reich in 1938, training centres in Vienna were closed and Jewish or politically undesirable care workers were dismissed. While most professional groups have already come to terms with the history of their disenfranchisement, persecution, expulsion and murder, this has yet to be done for the professional group of care workers.

The aim of the one-year research project is to explore the biographies of those trained welfare workers who were persecuted under National Socialism. Using the methods of biographical research, archives and compilations are being researched in order to trace their lives on the basis of administrative documents and existing literature. The educational and professional experiences of the welfare workers are supplemented by other sources such as first-person documents or reports and stories from professional contacts or descendants of the welfare workers.

Above all, the biographical break caused by National Socialism is to be analysed, be it through experiences of discrimination, dismissal, concentration camps, murder, flight and a possible new start in a country of exile. This biographical information forms the basis for a scientific publication. Expelled and murdered welfare workers are thus rescued from oblivion. At the same time, an important contribution is made to the professional history of Social Work.