Aktion T4 was a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-war trials against doctors who had been involved in the killings. The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, a street address of the Chancellery department set up in early 1940, in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with Aktion T4. Certain German physicians were authorised to select patients "deemed incurably sick, after most critical medical examination" and then administer to them a "mercy death". In October 1939, Adolf Hitler signed a "euthanasia note", backdated to 1 September 1939, which authorised his physician Karl Brandt and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler to begin the killing.
Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds.
Adolf Wölfli was a Swiss artist who was one of the first artists to be associated with the Art Brut or outsider art label.
Leo Navratil was an Austrian psychiatrist and author.
Oswald Tschirtner was an artist from Austria who had schizophrenia. He was known by the "pseudonym" of O.T.
Klosterneuburg, frequently abbreviated to Kloburg by locals, is a town in the Tulln District of the Austrian state of Lower Austria. It has a population of about 27,500. The Stift Klosterneuburg, which was established in 1114 and soon after given to the Augustinians, is of particular historical importance.
The Vienna Secession is an art movement, closely related to Art Nouveau, that was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian painters, graphic artists, sculptors and architects, including Josef Hoffman, Koloman Moser, Otto Wagner and Gustav Klimt. They resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists in protest against its support for more traditional artistic styles. Their most influential architectural work was the Secession exhibitions hall designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich as a venue for expositions of the group. Their official magazine was called Ver Sacrum, which published highly stylised and influential works of graphic art. In 1905 the group itself split, when some of the most prominent members, including Klimt, Wagner, and Hoffmann, resigned in a dispute over priorities, but it continued to function, and still functions today, from its headquarters in the Secession Building. In its current form, the Secession exhibition gallery is independently led and managed by artists.
Judith Scott was an American fiber sculptor, born with Down Syndrome and deaf. She was internationally renowned for her art. In 1987, Judith was enrolled at the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, which supports people with developmental disabilities. There, Judith discovered her passion and talent for abstract fiber art, and she was able to communicate in a new form. An account of Scott's life, Entwined: Sisters and Secrets in the Silent World of Artist Judith Scott, was written by her twin sister, Joyce Wallace Scott, and was published in 2016.
Am Spiegelgrund was a children's clinic in Vienna during World War II, where 789 patients were murdered under child euthanasia in Nazi Germany. Between 1940 and 1945, the clinic operated as part of the psychiatric hospital Am Steinhof later known as the Otto Wagner Clinic within the Baumgartner Medical Center located in Penzing, the 14th district of Vienna.
Paul Gösch, also Goesch or Göschen, was a German artist, architect, lithographer, and designer of the early twentieth century; he was associated with the main elements of German Expressionism.
Josef Karl Rädler (1844–1917) was a porcelain painter from Austria, described as “...one of the most exciting self-taught artists to be discovered in recent years.”. Rather than from his work on porcelain, the main recognition he has received as an artist is for roughly 400 watercolour paintings he produced whilst an in-patient at asylums in Austria from 1897 onwards, that were only discovered roughly 50 years after his death.
The Hartheim killing centre was a killing facility involved in the Nazi programme known as Aktion T4, in which German citizens deemed mentally or physically unfit were systematically murdered with poison gas. Often, these patients were transferred from other killing facilities such as the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna. This was initially a programme of "involuntary euthanasia" permitted under the law ostensibly to enable the lawful and painless killing of incurably ill patients; these murders continued even after the law was rescinded in 1942. Other victims included Jews, Communists and those considered undesirable by the state. Concentration camp inmates who were unfit for work, or otherwise deemed troublesome, were also executed here. The facility was housed in Hartheim Castle in the municipality of Alkoven, near Linz, Austria, which now is a memorial site and documentation centre.
Projekttheater Vorarlberg is a theatrical group in Austria, established in 1988 by Sieglinde Müller and Dietmar Nigsch. It puts on two productions a year and has performed all over the Austria, South Tyrol and Bavaria since 1995. The group is directed by Susanne Lietzow. In 2006 the group received the Nestroy Theatre Prize for their production of Hans Carl Artmann's How much, Schatzi?.
Johann Hauser was an Austrian outsider artist.
August Walla (1936–2001) was an Austrian outsider artist.
Albert Reuss was an Austrian-born British painter and sculptor. He was born in Vienna and fled to Britain in 1938 following the Anschluss, Adolf Hitler’s annexation of Austria to the German Reich. In the process, Reuss lost many members of his family, and the reputation he had built up as an artist in Vienna. He continued to work as an exiled artist, but his style changed dramatically, reflecting the trauma he had suffered. Many public collections in Britain hold his work, most notably Newlyn Art Gallery in Cornwall, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere and the Albertina both in Vienna, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel.
Creative Growth Art Center is a nonprofit arts organization, based in Oakland, California, that provides studios, supplies, and gallery space to artists with developmental, mental, and physical disabilities. It is one of the oldest and largest art center for people with disabilities in the world. It is currently located at 355 24th Street in Oakland, California.
Philipp Weiss is an Austrian writer and playwright. In September 2018, he published his critically acclaimed debut novel, Am Weltenrand sitzen die Menschen und lachen.
Ein schöner Hase ist meistens der Einzellne is a 2013 play by Austrian playwright and writer Philipp Weiss. It is based on the true story of two schizophrenic patients of the Gugging mental institution which uses artistic therapy. The play premiered at Feldkirch's Alte Hallenbad Feldkirch on 13 December 2013 in a production by the Projekttheater Vorarlberg theatrical group.
Maria Gugging is a suburb of the town of Klosterneuburg in Austria.
