Lecture about deaf people in the Nazi era and the Biesold archive

8 May 2025

Photo: UHH/IDGS

Public lecture on the topic “‘You must remain silent, you must not talk to anyone else about this intervention’: Introduction to the Biesold Archive”

When: Thursday, May 8, 2025, 10:15-11:45 a.m.
Where: Von-Melle-Park 8, Educational Sciences, Lecture Hall H, Anna-Siemsen-Hörsaal
What: Public lecture on the topic “‘You must remain silent, you must not talk to anyone else about this intervention’: Introduction to the Biesold Archive”
Who: Guido Joachim, Library for the Humanities
Languages: German, DGS and International Sign

'Du musst schweigen, Du darfst mit keinem anderen Menschen über diesen Eingriff reden' is the title of an interview that Thomas Plotzki conducted with Horst Biesold in 1995 (in: Das Zeichen 34 pp. 438-447) and which focuses on his commitment to deaf people who were affected by the “Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses” (Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Disease) during the Third Reich. Biesold made contact with over 2000 deaf people affected and researched their fates with questionnaires and correspondence and made them public for compensation claims. The resulting archive was transferred to the library of the Institute of German Sign Language in 1996.

After a short historical excursus on this 1933 law, documents from the archive such as sterilization decisions, correspondence with those affected and an excerpt from the video “Nazi injustice against deaf people” by Bremen students from 1993 will be shown. These are historical testimonies to the injustice done to deaf people in the period 1933-1945 and give an idea of what Horst Biesold expressed in the above interview as follows: “But it wasn't just about sterilization itself, that all sounds so banal today, but you also have to see what bent lifelines have grown out of it: Celibacy, childlessness, in the case of women a very massive intervention in the body, but especially in the case of women - very terrible operations that have claimed many lives.”

The event is open to the public, registration is not necessary.

The lecture is part of the project week marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation from National Socialism at the University of Hamburg.