Viktor Frankl and the Shoah: Advancing the Debate (SpringerBriefs in Psychology) 3030830624, 9783030830625

Table of contents :
Foreword
Contents
Part I: The Debate
Chapter 1: Introduction
Two Personal Remarks
References
Chapter 2: How Not to Reconstruct History
References
Part II: 1925–1940
Chapter 3: 1925–1933: From Red Vienna to the Corporative State
References
Chapter 4: 1936–1940: The Medical Society for Psychotherapy and the Göring Institute (Berlin/Vienna)
References
Part III: 1940–1945
Chapter 5: 1940–1942: At the Rothschild Hospital
References
Chapter 6: 1942–1945: Theresienstadt – Auschwitz – Kaufering – Türkheim
References
Part IV: Aftermath
Chapter 7: 1946: Man’s Search for Meaning
References
Chapter 8: 1946–1997: Review—Frankl on the Holocaust
References
Afterword
Why Frankl?
Why Pytell?
Why Me?
Appendix
Comment on the Question of NSDAP Membership of the Head of the Viennese Psychiatric Hospital Steinhof, Dr. Alfred Mauczka,
Index

Citation preview

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN PSYCHOLOGY

Alexander Batthyány

Viktor Frankl and the Shoah Advancing the Debate 123

SpringerBriefs in Psychology

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Alexander Batthyány

Viktor Frankl and the Shoah Advancing the Debate

Alexander Batthyány Research Institute for Theoretical Psychology and Personalist Studies Pázmány Péter University, Budapest and Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis Moscow, Russia

ISSN 2192-8363     ISSN 2192-8371 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Psychology ISBN 978-3-030-83062-5    ISBN 978-3-030-83063-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83063-2 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword1

To those who were personally acquainted with Viktor Frankl, the effect of his charismatic personality was inescapable. Like the many thousands of participants in the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Austria’s violent “Anschluss” to Nazi Germany that was held outside Vienna’s city hall on 10 March 1988, I was deeply moved by Viktor Frankl’s speech. On the one hand, I was inspired by the captivating rhetoric and oratory artistry Frankl displayed at the age of 83; on the other hand, I was touched by the substance of his address: rejecting any notion of collective guilt from a position of reconciliation. However, as a historian and head of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW), an organization that was set up by former resistance fighters and victims of National Socialism, I took a critical view vis-à-vis some of Frankl’s observations and I do not consider myself his apologist. Not least, I was concerned, back in 1995, that Frankl did not more emphatically and at an earlier date reject the politically motivated ingratiation of FPÖ chairman Jörg Haider, whom I judged to be a right-wing extremist and had journalistic as well as legal disputes with. In the course of my research into the resistance and Nazi euthanasia, I had previously come across Viktor Frankl’s efforts, in collaboration with Prof. Otto Pötzl, head of the Psychiatric-Neurological Clinic at the Vienna University Hospital, and the social worker for the Jewish community in Vienna, Franziska Löw, to save Jewish patients, particularly children, from Nazi euthanasia. In 1993 I held, together with my DÖW colleague, Dr. Elisabeth Klamper, an extensive interview with Viktor Frankl at his apartment at Mariannengasse 1  in Vienna’s ninth district, where he talked inter alia about his difficult years as a physician at the Rothschild Hospital and paid homage to his fellow doctors. He had amazing memory and was able to identify all the doctors depicted on a photograph from 1941 or 1942. I was all the more taken aback—indeed, horrified—when Prof. Alexander Batthyány sent me an excerpt from an article published by Dr. Timothy Pytell that 1  Wolfgang Neugebauer, Dr. phil., historian, 1983–2004 head of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW), since 1995 honorary professor of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna; numerous publications on the resistance and NS euthanasia.

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Foreword

ascribes the assertion that “Frankl did not sabotage any euthanasia” to me. I have never made this statement and it contradicts all my publications on the resistance and Nazi euthanasia that mention Frankl’s efforts to save Jewish patients from euthanasia. Maybe Timothy Pytell misunderstood my observation that most of those saved from euthanasia by Frankl and Löw became victims of the Shoah at a later date. Pytell did not conduct an interview (with structured questions and subsequent authorization) with me in 1997, but asked me, in the course of a short conversation, in-depth questions about Frankl’s brain operations at the Jewish Hospital, which I could not comment on for lack of medical knowledge. Back then I already perceived (and I clearly remember to this day) that Timothy Pytell was driven by a downright fanatical rejection of Viktor Frankl. I subsequently had the opportunity to read Alexander Batthyány’s critical works on the subject of Timothy Pytell’s publications on Frankl. I have rarely come across such a multitude of manipulations and factual errors, as well as ignorance of scientific literature and relevant archive materials, as in Pytell’s publications. I was particularly disconcerted by Pytell’s compulsive endeavor to depict the Jew, anti-Nazi, and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl in ostensible proximity to National Socialism. I am very grateful to Alexander Batthyány for taking the trouble to delve into Timothy Pytell’s works and to refute every single allegation against Viktor Frankl. He comes to the conclusion that these publications mainly served the purpose of reinforcing a pre-existing rejection of Viktor Frankl and his work with insinuations, contrived “facts,” and misinterpretations, exacerbated by a lack of German language skills. Whether publications of such “quality” as Timothy Pytell’s anti-Frankl works are in fact deserving of comprehensive rebuttal is up for discussion. However, I am convinced that Alexander Batthyány’s was and remains relevant, not least because impartial readers, who are not historians of the Nazi era, cannot discern the questionability of Pytell’s assertions—at least not at first glance. Take for example Timothy Pytell’s assertion that Dr. Alfred Mauczka, who, as head of Steinhof, was Frankl’s superior until 1937, became an “applicant” for NSDAP membership on April 14, 1940. This assertion, which was intended to construe a—temporally far-fetched—link between Frankl and an alleged Nazi, can only be falsified by attentively reading the relevant index card of the Reichsärztekammer [Reich Chamber of Physicians], which is available at the German Federal Archive’s collection of the former Berlin Document Center. Timothy Pytell has turned the applicant for the Reich Chamber of Physicians into an applicant for the NSDAP, as can be gleaned from the detailed statement in the appendix. Viktor Frankl, a scientist of international renown and founder of a new school of psychotherapy, who asserted himself against anti-Semitism, discrimination, and Nazi persecution in the course of his dramatic life, deserves to have his reputation defended against disparagement and hostility under the guise of science. Alexander Batthyány has convincingly succeeded in doing just that. University of Vienna Vienna, Austria

Wolfgang Neugebauer

Accuracy is a duty, not a virtue. A. E. Housman

Translated by Georg Philipp von Pezold. vii

Contents

Part I The Debate 1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    3 Two Personal Remarks������������������������������������������������������������������������������    9 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   12 2 How Not to Reconstruct History������������������������������������������������������������   13 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   22 Part II 1925–1940 3 1925–1933: From Red Vienna to the Corporative State����������������������   25 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   28 4 1936–1940: The Medical Society for Psychotherapy and the Göring Institute (Berlin/Vienna)����������������������������������������������   29 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   51 Part III 1940–1945 5 1940–1942: At the Rothschild Hospital��������������������������������������������������   55 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   74 6 1942–1945: Theresienstadt – Auschwitz – Kaufering – Türkheim������   75 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   79 Part IV Aftermath 7 1946: Man’s Search for Meaning������������������������������������������������������������   83 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   93 8 1946–1997: Review—Frankl on the Holocaust ������������������������������������   95 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  112

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Contents

Afterword����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  115 Appendix ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  121 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  125

Part I

The Debate

Chapter 1

Introduction

In the winter of 2001/2002, I received—presumably in my then capacity of being on the staff of the Viktor Frankl Archive in Vienna—several letters with copies of an article with the title: “Viktor Frankl on Auschwitz. Was the famous Holocaust survivor gassed?” published in the Journal of Historical Review. Some of the accompanying messages requested additional information—while others contained triumphant gloating over the “Viktor Frankl myth,” and the “entire Holocaust farce,” finally being “debunked.” Among other things, the article claimed: Ergo, according to the Auschwitz Chronicle, and the records on which it claims to be based, Viktor Frankl must have been gassed nearly fifty-three years before his widely announced death in September 1997. Who was the man, then, who left Auschwitz a few days after the arrival of the transport from Theresienstadt and went on to write all those books? (O’Keefe, 2001, p. 10).

Of course, the author of the article did not actually believe that Frankl was in fact murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz—and those who sent me the article presumably did not, either. Rather, the article was intended to “prove” that there were no gas chambers at all. It did not take long to figure out what this mysterious affair was all about. The author of the article was the notorious Holocaust denier Theodore O’Keefe—and the Journal of Historical Review was published by the similarly notorious Institute of Historical Review, a focal point of neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial propaganda (Mentel, 2016). Because I had not hitherto encountered any Holocaust deniers, I was faced with a new terrain which I felt little desire to explore at greater length. I therefore put the matter to rest. Little did I know at the time that I would again have to deal with this article, and particularly with one of the chief witnesses cited in it, only 3 years later. For Theodore O’Keefe largely bases his revisionist “argument” on the “research” of Timothy Pytell—an American author who, in a critical book about Viktor Frankl, which he submitted as a dissertation in 1997, attempts to shed a “new light” on the life and work of the founder of meaning-oriented existential psychotherapy © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Batthyány, Viktor Frankl and the Shoah, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83063-2_1

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(logotherapy and existential analysis), and author of Man’s Search for Meaning. The German translation of Pytell’s dissertation was eventually published in early 2005 by the Studienverlag Innsbruck, under the title Viktor Frankl—Ende eines Mythos?, and 10 years later, a slightly revised and expanded English version was published under the title Viktor Frankl’s Search for Meaning: An Emblematic 20thcentury Life (Berghahn Books). In these books and several articles (which mostly consist of variants of, and excerpts from, said dissertation), Pytell attempts to radically reinterpret the life and work of Viktor Frankl. In principle, this would be an interesting and intellectually stimulating undertaking. For, even with appreciation for Viktor Frankl’s work, one can hardly deny that most published portrayals of Viktor Frankl’s life and work are very positive, at times even hagiographic, lacking in some respects the necessary distance one might expect from scholarly biographies. As we shall see, however, one cannot accuse Pytell of an excessive impartial relationship to his object of study, either; but more on this below. And so—although I had felt fortunate to be able to turn to other matters after my first brief encounter with O’Keefe’s Holocaust denialism, I was, on the occasion of Viktor Frankl’s centenary (2005), confronted time and again with Pytell’s accusations against Frankl. And these accusations are quite something: Pytell accuses Viktor Frankl of deceit in his later accounts of his political views and medical practice in the interwar period and after 1938, the year of the “Anschluss,” Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany. Pytell thus claims that Frankl sought to ingratiate himself with the authoritarian corporate state (Ständestaat) and, after the “Anschluss,” with the National Socialists, especially with the National Socialist psychotherapy movement (the so-­ called Göring Institute). And Pytell further claims that at the Rothschild Hospital (the last remaining Jewish hospital in Vienna after 1938; [Stern, 1974]), Frankl conducted “experimental research using Jewish suicide patients for the Nazis.” And if this is not enough, Pytell also accuses Frankl of having deceived his readers about his 3-year detention in four different concentration camps (Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and the two Dachau subcamps Türkheim and Kaufering). In other words: Pytell denounces Frankl as a notorious liar and of having actively participated in, or tacitly supported, the Nazi savagery up to and including his years at Theresienstadt (albeit hardly predestined for such a role as a Jew). To be sure—Frankl’s appraisal of the Holocaust had and has its critics, especially those who argue that his rejection of the notion of collective guilt is too conciliatory, and that his belief that it was possible to “remain human” even in abject dehumanization does not do justice to the actual suffering and cruelty of the extermination camps (such as, for example, Langer, 1982). However, the allegations made by Pytell were of an altogether different nature. They did not relate to Frankl’s interpretation of the Holocaust, but rather to his own conduct during and under Nazi rule—and thus to the question of how truthfully Frankl had described his life and actions during these critical years. What Pytell had submitted was thus more than a simple critique: It was an attempt to fundamentally reconstruct Frankl’s biography. Pytell wanted to “expose” Frankl as a fellow traveler of the regime.

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The fact that this image contradicted everything I knew about Frankl—not least owing to my work on his private archives—was all the more reason to look into the matter. I therefore contacted Timothy Pytell immediately after reading his book, leading to several personal meetings, phone conversations, and email discussions the contents of which I will discuss later in this book. I came to know, however, even before our first meeting, that Pytell had written large parts of his dissertation during a lengthy study visit in Vienna—what is more, at a time when Viktor Frankl was still alive, and would have been available for enquiries or interviews. In a later account (2017), Pytell even mentions that during his stay in Vienna, an acquaintance who knew Frankl suggested the obvious to him: to interview Frankl. Pytell’s explanation why he chose to not seize this opportunity is somewhat vague and ambiguous, especially since Pytell himself writes that even at the time, he “knew I may later regret it”: The suggestion to interview Viktor Frankl came in the summer of 1997 from a young student who was working in the university medical archive and apparently knew Frankl. I think his name was Joachim Wieder. I met with him and my good friend Karl Fallend in the café Blau Stern [sic!] to discuss the idea. Both Karl and Joachim thought I should pursue the idea and we discussed a strategy and possible questions. I wasn’t excited by the strategy of pandering to the great man of stature in order to entrap him to be honest about his decisions during the war. So I decided not to pursue it. I knew at the time I may later regret it – but I went with my gut instincts so to speak. (Pytell, 2017b)

In other accounts (2005) Pytell says the he did not avail himself of the opportunity to discuss with Frankl, because he felt, as he puts it verbatim, “contempt” (Pytell, 2005, p. 165) for Frankl—such contempt that it surpassed his scientific interest in personally questioning his “research subject.” Pytell further writ es that he is “biased,” that he feels “revulsion” for Frankl, that he is “glad not to have known him,” etc. Pytell’s admission of his personal dislike of Frankl was a bit unexpected, but at least seemed disarmingly honest to me (if somewhat out of place in a historical biography, or, as Pytell prefers to call his oeuvre, “intellectual history”), but was not in fact all that straightforward. Pytell hid these remarks in his book’s postscript, rather than using its preface to state point-blank that he “despises” Frankl. Yet curiously enough, Pytell also writes in his book that, apart from his revulsion for Frankl, what kept him from addressing him was the fact that they presumably “wouldn’t have had a lot to say to each other” (Pytell, 2005, p. 165). Now, emotional issues— gut instinct and contempt—aside, there are good reasons to dispute this. Someone who believes to have discovered ground-breaking new facts in the biography of his research subject surely has a lot to say to and discuss with him. Wolfgang Neugebauer, then scientific director of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance had his own encounter with Pytell at that time and attests to the fact that Pytell was driven by a “downright fanatical rejection of Viktor Frankl” (see Foreword). His personal dislike for Frankl aside, what seemed even more peculiar to me is the fact that Pytell also did not take the opportunity to consult the extensive Viktor Frankl Archives Vienna. This seemed all the more remarkable in view of the fact that, during his stay in Vienna, Pytell was writing his thesis at the Department of

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Contemporary History, and thus within 200  m distance from the Viktor Frankl Archives. This cannot have been down to a lack of visibility of the Viktor Frankl Archives which, as a member of the UNESCO Archive Portal, is internationally renowned as one of Europe’s most extensive archives of European psychotherapy and intellectual history between 1920 and 1997. Psychologists, medical practitioners, and historians from all over the world regularly approach the archive (Batthyány, 2006). It appeared to me to be a monumental omission that someone who tries to write a kind of tell-all book about Frankl would do so without at least seeking to consult, for example, the extensive correspondence, notes, and other generally unavailable primary sources that deal with precisely the topics and time periods that Pytell covers. So far, however—up to the present day (spring 2021)—Pytell has not contacted the archive or consulted a single one of the many documents and originals that directly pertain to his research (I will present them in this book). It would soon transpire that this omission was also reflected in Pytell’s work. For Pytell relied almost exclusively on publicly available material (if available in English translation, for lack of German proficiency) to construct his narrative of Frankl’s life and work in the period before and during the war. In view of this dearth of source material (after all, less than a tenth of Frankl writings of the time period covered by Pytell has been translated into English), Pytell made ample use of abundant guesswork, suspicion, speculation, personal value judgment and interpretation (as well as a pronounced antipathy, openly, if somewhat inappropriately, acknowledged in his book’s epilogue). Additionally, and perhaps even more surprising, is the fact that in the few cases in which Pytell consulted other historical sources, such as documents from historical archives or interviews with experts (such as Wolfgang Neugebauer), he misrepresented what these documents or experts actually conveyed—see Wolfgang Neugebauer’s Foreword about an “interview” which was in fact not a structured interview, but a brief casual conversation during which the very opposite was said of what Pytell claims had been said by Wolfgang Neugebauer. And see the Appendix by Neugebauer and Schwarz on Pytell’s severe misrepresentations of a historical document about Frankl’s supervisor at the Psychiatric Clinic Steinhof, Dr. Mauczka: Pytell presents Mauczka’s membership application to the Reich Chamber of Physicians as a membership application to the NSDAP.  As Neugebauer and Schwarz—custodians of the Archive (Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance in Vienna) in which said document is stored—, put it: It is apparent that Dr. Pytell either did not linguistically understand, or intentionally manipulated, the document of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance in Vienna he quotes.1

So, while I had little to say on the subject of O’Keefe’s revisionist ramblings about Frankl and the Holocaust—others had tried and failed to open Holocaust deniers’ eyes to the historical truth denied by them—I now resolved to further probe Pytell’s narrative and allegations more closely. The initial result of this 2-year research was a convolute of files and notes, but I was not decided yet whether I should use them for a publication at all.  See Appendix.

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However, a discussion of Pytell’s work was soon held at the instigation of the Austrian psychotherapy magazine no:os. This conversation, initially scheduled as a short interview, continued for several afternoons and its transcript ran to some hundred pages, mostly based on the above-mentioned files. An abridged version of this conversation was initially published as a supplement to no:os (Winter 2005). A longer version was printed in 2007 under the title Mythos Frankl? Zur Geschichte der Logotherapie 1925–1945. Antwort auf Timothy Pytell, published by Lit Berlin-Wien-Zürich. For the present English edition, I have revised and expanded the text of this interview. I also added new results of further research, such as valuable information gathered through the Oral History Project of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, as well as research conducted at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna which presents new findings showing that Frankl collaborated with the Jewish resistance fighter and social worker of the Jewish Community in Vienna, Franziska Danneberg-Löw, in saving mentally handicapped adolescents from deportation and “euthanasia.” Additionally, further amendments have been added regarding Frankl’s affiliation with the Austrian Society of Jewish Physicians and the Austrian Chapter of the World Zionist Organization. I also added new research results concerning the date of the foundation of the Göring Institute in Vienna, which Pytell consistently misstates with far-reaching implications. (The Vienna branch of the Institute was founded in 1938, and not in 1936, as Pytell claims, and became active only in 1939, which is corroborated by several sources, including letters and the public founding announcement by its founder, Matthias Heinrich Göring, as well as by recent historical research by Thomas Aichhorn, Christiane Rothländer, and others).2 Another new archival finding not discussed in the German first edition of this book is the—as far as we know, only—testimony of one the suicide attempts patients rescued and treated (and subsequently protected from being deported to Auschwitz) under Frankl’s care at the Rothschild Hospital in 1942. I also touch upon and discuss some of the newer and recent writings by Pytell— such as the (marginally updated) American edition of his book and some subsequent articles. And I will also take a brief look at Pytell’s philosophical interpretation of the Holocaust, which would, quite frankly, deserve a separate publication—such as, for instance, Pytell’s assertion that Viktor Frankl was  or believed himself to be “morally purified at Auschwitz” (Pytell 2005, 161; Pytell 2015, 154)—which Pytell offers without ever explaining, however, what from, or what for, anyone (or, more specifically: Frankl) had to be, or should have been, “morally purified” at the Auschwitz extermination camp. Frankl’s mother and brother and several members of his extended family were murdered in Auschwitz, and it was here that the was separated from his first wife (who later died at Bergen-Belsen), and it was here also that the manuscript of his first, then unpublished, book was taken away from 2  See Aichhorn, T. & Rothländer, C. (2012). Zur Errichtung der Wiener Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Göring-Instituts und der Arbeits- und Ausbildungsgruppe von August Aichhorn. In: Ash, M. G., & Aichhorn, T. (2012). Materialien zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse in Wien 1938-1945. Frankfurt: Brandes & Apsel, p.  347f. in which a detailed historical account of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft/ Göring Institute in Vienna is provided.

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him. In brief, then, Auschwitz was one of the darkest moments in Frankl’s biography, closely matched perhaps only by the experience of returning to Vienna after the liberation, only to find out that most of his family members and friends had been murdered by the Nazis and that he was utterly alone now. Pytell does not explain how this, in his view, qualifies as “moral purification”, and perhaps one should be grateful at least for that. Yet other aspects of Pytell’s interpretation of the Holocaust seem no less debatable, such as his claim that every Holocaust survivor of Frankl’s generation had incurred “some elemental guilt”: As survivors, everyone in Frankl’s generation had some elemental guilt. Everyone was in need of self-examination. No one was pure.3

It is possible—I will briefly touch upon the question in the last part of this book— that this sweeping apportioning of guilt to the survivors of the Holocaust is one reason, or motive, for the self-admitted “revulsion” and “disgust” Pytell feels against Frankl. And yet, while much of this would be worthy of critical discussion, I will in the following mostly touch upon historical questions, with the addition of the earlier mentioned amendments and recent findings in several archives and libraries that have been included in this book. The inclusion of these records and findings in this book, however, will not alter the essence of my original (German) critique of Pytell’s works; rather, they will strengthen it. A fundamental reappraisal of Pytell’s work was hardly necessary, or indeed possible, because Pytell has not published anything substantially new since. Indeed, while Pytell published and occasionally publishes excerpts of his book as articles, these are largely congruent with his German book (and this book, in turn, is largely congruent with Pytell’s dissertation, submitted in 1997). In other words, we are largely dealing with material that has been first published more than 20 years ago. Pytell’s subsequent “research” on Frankl has not yielded any significant new insight (though Pytell claims he recently had an “epiphany” [Pytell, 2017a] which I shall briefly address later in this book), let alone documents or evidence in support of his allegations. The only other significant new development (since the publication of my original critique in 2006) advancing the debate is that several reviews of Pytell’s book have since been published. These reviews were not available to me at the beginning of my research. And perhaps unsurprisingly, most critics who have reviewed Pytell’s book also find abundant fault with his approach—and they, too, point out the numerous research errors and misinterpretations, occasioned in large part by a questionable use of sources, as well as inadequate knowledge of Viktor Frankl’s life and work (and Central European intellectual and Jewish history in general): • Pytell has simply not done his homework (Janik, 2007). • [The book] shows contemporary history at its muck-raking weakest. (ibid.) 3  This claim is repeatedly found in Pytell’s writings (there tend to be overlaps between his several publications). This quote comes from: Pytell, T. (2012). Viktor Frankl: The Inside Outsider. In: Bischof, G., Plasser, F., & Maltschnig, E. (Hrsg.) (2012). Austrian lives. Univerity of New Orleans Press, p. 251.

Two Personal Remarks

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• […] hardly excusable ignorance […] (ibid.) • […] ignores much of the literature on Viennese Jewry’s role in the wider cultural arena (Kauders, 2016). • […] outdated discourse about Vienna’s kaleidoscopic Jewish culture exacerbated by numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations […] (Corbett, 2016). • Statements, which abound in the work, rankle in the face of the vast wealth of literature on Central European and Viennese Jewish culture that has proliferated in the two decades since Pytell began his research on Viktor Frankl. (ibid.) • Not surprisingly, the footnotes reveal that this is a result of the most recent literature cited dating from the 1980s (his misreading of Lisa Silverman’s brilliant work notwithstanding). (ibid.) • Erroneous renditions of German nomenclature and quotations abound, whether owing to the author or the editor is yet unclear, enhancing the sense that this work could have engaged better with the Central European context. (ibid.) • […] frankly patchy in its narration of Frankl’s life in his Central European environs. (Engstrom, 2018) • underdeveloped, lacking a conclusion and too often indulging in superficial digressions into scholarly literature on the Holocaust (ibid.) The same applies to the second main focus of Pytell’s work—Frankl and his school of psychotherapy, i.e. logotherapy, and, more generally, the intellectual history of Austrian psychiatry and psychotherapy of the last century. Here, too, according to the renowned Allan Janik, director of the Brenner Archive at the University of Innsbruck, Pytell fails in the central intellectual discussion and penetration of even relatively simple arguments: • [Pytell] insists, for example, that the philosophers Martin Heidegger and Max Scheler were important for Frankl, but the reader gets only the foggiest idea how that was so. (Janik, 2007) • Indeed, the substantial question of Frankl’s intellectual development and affinities is dealt with in a highly superficial manner. (ibid.). • There is something important to discuss here, especially in the context of what Pytell has brought to light, but he seems neither willing nor capable of pursuing such a serious intellectual inquiry. (ibid.) This book, then, is about this “something important to discuss here”—and aims to initiate the serious intellectual discussion that Janik and other reviewers find lacking in Pytell’s work—for good reasons, as we shall see.

Two Personal Remarks I am of course aware how easily the impression can arise, and how obvious it may seem, that somebody like myself, who has dedicated a substantial part of his academic career to Viktor Frankl’s psychological and philosophical work would “in

10

1 Introduction

any case” find nothing positive to say about Pytell’s writings. In other words—what else to expect from the director of the Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna but to deflect Pytell’s allegations from Frankl and come to his defense? In the hope of making the background of its development and my sincere endeavor for an even-handed approach to the historical facts transparent, I therefore want to briefly touch upon the evolution of this book: When I first embarked on my research into Pytell’s allegations, I was working as an assistant researcher at the Viktor Frankl Archive alongside my studies at the University of Vienna; I did not yet have a position at the Viktor Frankl Institute. While I did already feel a strong connection to Viktor Frankl’s work, I would have been prepared to stand corrected. In other words, I was poised for being disabused of the alleged illusion of the “Frankl myth” depicted by Pytell and, had Pytell’s allegations been correct, to seriously reconsider my position vis-à-vis Viktor Frankl, and possibly also his work. I did not, therefore, initially start my research on the subject with a view to necessarily disproving Pytell, let alone, as mentioned above, writing a rejoinder. I first wanted to ascertain how much, if anything, there was to disprove. The motives and intentions of my research were thus somewhat simpler, and the research itself essentially open-ended: I wanted to investigate these allegations for myself, in order to find out whether there were not in fact questionable or dark spots in Viktor Frankl’s life and self-representation, which would expose much of what I held to be true as deception, or, at any rate, put it into a different perspective. What is more, I was at the very source, at the place no serious research into the known and lesser known details of Viktor Frankl’s life and work could really do without: As volunteer at Viktor Frankl’s extensive private estate, I had unrestricted access to Viktor Frankl’s entire private and academic letters, writings, and documents. Furthermore, and it is impossible to overstate this point if one strives for serious source work—which is, after all, one of the historian’s basic tools—: Since German is my mother tongue, I was, in contrast to Pytell, in a position to actually read the original texts and documents. In addition, I soon was in relatively close and—unlikely as it may sound— friendly contact with Pytell. The fact remains, however, that soon after the beginning of my research, I had to recognize that Pytell had misled himself and his readers—including me—throughout much of his book. Now: mistakes and errors happen, albeit hardly at the frequency found in Pytell’s work. What is surprising, however, is that even some of the more obvious mistakes that were pointed out to Pytell by me and other reviewers remain uncorrected in Pytell’s subsequent publications. This includes relatively simple things, such as wrong book titles or terms (Pytell continues to entitle Frankl’s play “Synchronization in Birkenwald” “Synchronization in Buchenwald”; he turns Scheler’s “materiale Wertethik” [“material value ethics”] into “nationale Wertethik” [“national value ethics”]; even simple psychological constructs are fundamentally misinterpreted, etc.), but becomes more relevant where decisive events are wrongly dated. This is significant, in particular, for events that occurred before Austria’s “Anschluss” to Hitler’s Germany 1938 (i.e. when the Nazi Party was illegal in Austria), but are “transferred” to the post-“Anschluss” period by Pytell (i.e. during the Nazi reign in

Two Personal Remarks

11

Austria). More on this below. Accordingly, when reviewers such as Janik (2007) state that Pytell’s work contains “numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations,” it needs to be pointed out that these numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations inherently cannot remain without repercussions on Pytell’s inferences and, in fact, his entire narrative. It is this entire narrative that is the subject of this book and that shall be scrutinized and corrected. The second personal remark concerns my own person and my family background, which I want to disclose for the sake of transparency: Like so many European families (I have paternal roots in Hungary and maternal ones in Bulgaria, France, and francophone Switzerland), my family was affected in various ways by the events of the last century. Most of the Jewish part of my family living in Austria managed to emigrate to Japan, Hungary, and Switzerland before the larger pogroms began; very few of them returned to Austria after 1945. However, the fate of those family members living in Hungary, who opposed the Arrow Cross and the Nazi occupants, remains largely obscure to this day. Only a handful of their letters and other records have survived and are available at the International Center on Nazi Persecution in Bad Arolsen (Germany), as well as the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest. My paternal grandfather, on the other hand, hid Jewish relatives from the Nazis at his estate in Hungary (Körmend, one of the ancestral homes of my family) during the years of the “pro-German” government in Hungary. However, only 50 km apart, his sister in law, née Baroness Margit Thyssen-Bornemisza, married Batthyány, was to play, during the night of 24 March 1945, a not entirely resolved, but certainly inglorious role in the horrifying massacre of Rechnitz. Source material suggests that, after a love affair with the local SS commander, she continued to financially support him, as well as her erstwhile estate manager, during and after their escape (Batthyány, 2018). Like many families of the old Austria and the former crown lands, my family thus looks back on a mixed record: there were victims, there were upstanding people like my grandfather who tried to sabotage the Nazis’ actions—but there was also said great-aunt, who, to the best of my knowledge, refused to acknowledge her historical responsibility throughout her life. I see in this family background a calling to confront the Holocaust responsibly, meticulously and accurately. Too many historical lessons are at stake, and the topic is too serious, to expose it to distortions and misrepresentations. As we will see in this book, this is exactly what Pytell’s work does. As Wolfgang Neugebauer put it in the Foreword, Pytell’s work contains numerous “contrived ‘facts’ and misinterpretations, exacerbated by a lack of German language skills,” and countless incorrect assertions and misrepresentations, as well as research errors, and all of these create an apparently coherent narrative, which will nonetheless prove to be no more than a distortion of historical facts. Acknowledgments  Many people have contributed to the creation of this book: more than space allows me to mention by name: My students who repeatedly pointed out to me with critical queries that there was indeed a need for this book; and friends and colleagues from Vienna, Budapest and Moscow Universities who stood by me with valuable historical advice and encouragement.

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1 Introduction

Also, I especially would like to thank Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Neugebauer, 1983–2004 director of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstands, DÖW), professor of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna, for his kind help and encouragement and thoughtful comments on the first draft of this book, and for the foreword and appendix. I also thank Dr. Peter Schwarz, research associate of the Verein zur wissenschaftlichen Aufarbeitung der Zeitgeschichte (c/o Department of Contemporary History of the University of Vienna), co-author of appendix on the question of Alfred Mauczka’s political activities between 1938 and 1945. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge the kind support of Dr. Ursula Schwarz, archivist at the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstands, DÖW), for granting me access to archival documents during the difficult time of lockdown during the second Covid wave in Austria, when, in fact, the DÖW archive would have been closed to the public. Special thanks go to Dr. August Aichhorn for his invaluable help and information and his kind permission to reprint crucial archival documents on the history of the Jugendberatungsstellen and the Vienna Section of the Göring Institute (1938–1945). Many thanks go to Georg Philipp von Pezold for translating the German parts of this work into English and to Prof. Dr. Franz Vesely for critically reviewing the first drafts of this book. Additionally, I thank the staff of the Library at Vienna University’s Institute of Psychology, the Sigmund Freud Private Foundation in Vienna, the Institute for the History of Medicine in Vienna, the Archive of the KZ Gedenkstätte Dachau, the Bad Aarolsen Archives, The Archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, and the National Library, Berlin.

References Batthyány, A. (2006). Preserving the legacy: The Viktor Frankl archives in Vienna. In International Forum of Logotherapy (Vol. 1, p. 2006). Batthyány, S. (2018). Und was hat das mit mir zu tun? Hamburg: KiWi. Corbett, T. (2016). Viktor Frankl’s search for meaning: An emblematic 20th-century life by Timothy Pytell (review). Journal of Austrian Studies, 49(3–4), 181. Engstrom, E.  J. (2018). Timothy E.  Pytell. Viktor Frankl’s search for meaning: An emblematic 20th-century life. Review. American Historical Review, 123, 1419. Janik, A. (2007). Viktor Frankl. Review. Central European History, 2, 3. Kauders, A. D. (2016). Review. German History, 34, 3. Langer, L. (1982). Versions of survival: The Holocaust and the human spirit. State University of New York Press. Mentel, C. (2016). “Auschwitz muss fallen …” Die Negation des Holocaust und die extreme Rechte in der Bundesrepublik. In H.  P. Killguss & M.  Langebach (Eds.), “Opa war in Ordnung!” Erinnerungspolitik der extremen Rechten (pp.  118–129). NS-Dokumentationszentrum der Stadt Köln. O’Keefe, T. (2001). Viktor Frankl about Auschwitz. Was Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl gassed at Auschwitz? The Journal of Historical Review, 20, 5/6. Pytell, T. (2015). Viktor Frankl’s Search for Meaning. An Emblematic 20th Century Life. New York: Berghahn. Pytell, T. (2017a). Is it OK to criticize a saint? On humanizing Viktor Frankl. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/authoritarian-­therapy/201703/is-­it-­ok-­criticize­saint-­humanizing-­viktor-­frankl Pytell, T. (2017b). Criticizing a saint (Part 2). Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday. com//us/blog/authoritarian-­therapy/201708/criticizing-­saint-­part-­2 Stern, E. (1974). Die letzten zwölf Jahre Rothschild-Spital Wien: 1931-1943. Europäischer Verlag.

Chapter 2

How Not to Reconstruct History

NB: This book is based on an interview originally held in 2005 with the Austrian Psychotherapy Journal no:os. For the version that follows, the original interview format has been retained and the original editorial questions were kept unchanged, as their structure allows for a systematic examination of the subject matter, Pytell’s allegations, and the actual historical facts. However, the text, i.e. has been substantially expanded—first, to address Pytell’s and other more recent publications; second, to include more recent archival findings and other new sources. Q: Owing to your work at the Frankl archive, you are in an exceptional position to assess Pytell’s work. Before we go into details—what was the overall impression you had when reading his books and articles? A: Surprise, if only on account of the many factual errors that have found their way into it. Some of them might be inadvertent mistakes and may equally be owed to the fact that Pytell undertook most of his research and writing while he was still a doctoral candidate and may not have yet had the necessary research experience and skills, and did not add much after his original dissertation was submitted. However, that in itself does not excuse them, nor does it excuse the fact that these errors have not been corrected since in newer publications. It is, after all, customary in academic practice to correct research errors at the first opportunity, i.e. new editions, translations, lectures etc., and to generally try to improve and extend one’s own work. One such opportunity would have presented itself before the publication of his more recent works, including the English version of his book—after all, the author has an obligation vis-à-vis the reader, to ensure rigorous research before handing over a manuscript to a publisher. An entirely different matter is the misrepresentation of actual historical sources and documents, to which we will come later. Q: Pytell sees his work a study in intellectual history or the history of ideas, i.e. the study of the intersection between the historical context and the development, and content of ideas and models. You mentioned in earlier radio and newspaper © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Batthyány, Viktor Frankl and the Shoah, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83063-2_2

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interviews that Pytell’s understanding of Frankl’s work is, in some regards, severely lacking. Since we will not so much discuss these questions in the following, and will focus instead on historical issues, perhaps this would be the place to briefly address the question of how Pytell intellectually engages with Frankl’s work. A: There are indeed numerous false assertions made by Pytell which will most likely escape the general reader not familiar with Frankl’s work and his school of psychotherapy which goes by the double name “logotherapy and existential analysis.” These errors are indeed remarkable given that Pytell attempts no less than to offer a treatise on the “intellectual history” of Frankl and his work. Accordingly, one would expect that Pytell would get at least the very basic and simple facts right and present them correctly. Yet, for example, it already begins with how Frankl’s school of therapy should be called. Pytell wrongly claims that Frankl had initially been in doubt as to what to call his therapy: existential analysis, logotherapy or height psychology, and that he had “exclusively used logotherapy after the war” (Pytell, 2005, p. 183). The only problem is that there is not a single written work by Frankl after the war in which he does not use the correct double term “logotherapy and existential analysis.” The fact that Pytell, only a few pages later, quotes quite extensively from Frankl’s book Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Texte aus sechs Jahrzehnten,1 published in 1991, makes his claim all the more remarkable. It would have been enough for Pytell to read no further than the title of the book he quoted, since it invokes precisely the very existential analysis that Frankl ostensibly, according to Pytell, ceased to mention after 1945. Pytell furthermore contends that logotherapy and existential analysis are relativistic in their value systems (Pytell, 2005, p. 16; 92ff.; Pytell, 2015, p. 36; 39 f.) and that Frankl maintained that “the fulfillment of meaning was ultimately achieved by the individual’s absorption in the community” (Pytell, 2015, p. 71). The very opposite is true in both cases: Logotherapy regards collectivism as one of the four collective pathologies of the Zeitgeist (along with fanaticism, fatalism, and a provisory outlook on life; see Frankl, 1955) and insists on individual meaning seeking, individual responsibility, and individual choice. Pytell furthermore asserts that Frankl had developed no categorical imperative (Pytell, 2015, p. 84), which is a particularly strange claim, since, of all schools of psychotherapy, logotherapy and existential analysis do indeed postulate an explicit categorical imperative, which is even referred to as such. Pytell, however, writes verbatim: “Frankl therefore remained trapped in relativism, because he identified no transcendent ‘categorical imperatives’—only ‘missions,’ which were no more than acts of individualistic commitment” (Pytell, 2015, p.  84). And yet it is common knowledge that the very fact that logotherapy assumes an objective notion of meaning, which precludes relativism or mere individualistic commitment as much as mere subjectivism, is one of logotherapy’s philosophical differentiating 1  In 1990, Frankl handpicked his most important articles and papers and published them in an anthology which would serve as an easily accessible overview of his work: Frankl, V.E. (1991). Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Texte aus sechs Jahrzehnten. Weinheim: Beltz.

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characteristics vis-à-vis most other humanist and existentialist schools of psychotherapy (Batthyány & Lukas, 2020, p. 111ff.). Yet Pytell writes that Frankl’s “existentialist solution to human meaning was not grounded in any universal values” (Pytell, 2015, p. 84), which again misrepresents the very core ideas of logotherapy and existential analysis and their acceptance of universal values. Pytell then goes on to briefly discuss my own attempt to inform him about the ontological (and objective) value model of logotherapy and existential analysis—which I tried to keep simple and accessible. While Pytell writes that “Batthyány’s explication is helpful” (ibid.), unfortunately, Pytell’s comments tell me that my explication failed, for Pytell now claims that Frankl “posits absolutes that remain dependent on the individual’s conviction that absolutes exist” (ibid.) in which case they of course would be dependent on or a function of human belief—and hence not absolutes. And as to the alleged absence of a categorical imperative in Frankl’s work (Pytell, 2015, p. 84), it would have been easy to find Frankl’s categorical imperative, as it appears in just about every one of his books at least once, making it hard to miss: The categorical imperative of logotherapy reads as follows: “Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” It seems to us that nothing can enable to man to appreciate his responsibility as much and to the same extent as this motto (e.g. Frankl, 1955, 1987, 1991, 1995, 1997; emphasis AB).

Such mistakes and misunderstandings are all the more striking as Pytell does not tire of emphasizing how “shallow and simple” logotherapy and existential analysis are, and that they do not offer him any “intellectual challenge,” etc. (Pytell, 2005, p.  14f.). It is, however, conspicuous that, whenever Pytell discusses logotherapy (which, oddly, he also describes as “a form of existential analysis”), he fails to grasp its most basic and straightforward notions or even simple facts such as its name. Now Pytell works in the field of history (although, as we shall see, his handling of historical sources and data is rather questionable for a historian), but that doesn’t stop him from repeatedly trying his hand at sometimes reasonably complex philosophical topics. Unfortunately, however, these very discussions show that especially someone who purports to do intellectual history cannot be released from the obligation to engage in rational discourse, and that means not simply claiming that a position one may or may not have fully understood oneself is “wrong.” But often enough, Pytell’s sometimes very peculiar discussion of some of Frankl’s arguments amounts to just that. For example, when Pytell states—completely ignoring the ontological differences between layers, realms, and dimensions—that Frankl’s “claim that the spiritual realm existed above and beyond the material realm, and at the same time incorporated the material realm, is contradictory” (Pytell, 2015, p. 139). Yet in order to understand why Frankl came up with the concept of dimensional ontology (in contrast to Hartmann’s layer model—namely precisely to circumvent such a contradiction), one would not even have needed special philosophical knowledge; it would be sufficient already to know basic geometry’s definition of the nature of layers and dimensions. Similarly puzzling are Pytell’s discussions of the dichotomy and reconciliation of conflicting epistemic access to objective facts. Frankl was committed to objective

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value realism, but at the same time held that the same truth (or value) is being perceived differently depending on the perspective of the person accessing it. In other words, Frankl held that once one acknowledges that there is objective truth, an acknowledgment of perspectivism does not lead to ontological relativism; it merely means that there a different paths to and aspects of a given objective fact (Frankl, 2011, p. 371). This is not in itself a groundbreaking new or controversial idea—perspectivism is an epistemological position and as such does not in itself make a binding statement about the question of ontology of objective truth. It  only offers a model of how that objective truth can be accessed (e.g. Niiniluoto, 1991; Finkelde & Livingston, 2020; Greene et al., 2008). To all appearances, however, Pytell knows little about this debate—or even about the methodological differences between epistemology and ontology. For against the background of these knowledge gaps Pytell comes somewhat abruptly to the verdict: “Frankl’s attempt to resolve the relativism of existential perspectivism failed” (Pytell, 2015, p. 136). At other times, Pytell summarizes Frankl’s thinking in a way that asserts exactly the opposite of what Frankl has previously written—for instance, when Pytell claims: “Frankl’s theory of the spiritual dimension [...] denied meaning to material existence” (Pytell, 2015, p. 137). (In truth, Frankl held that our conscience helps us decipher the meaning of that very material existence which is, according to logotherapy, abundant in meaning). Unfortunately, Pytell’s intellectual engagement with the work of Frankl (or indeed other authors) is so poor that it is almost impossible to even find an entry point to enter into debate with his discussion. How can and should one engage with an author who does not know or acknowledge the differences between epistemology and ontology, who does not distinguish between realm and dimension, or who is unable or unwilling to render even relatively simple theses of Frankl without contradiction, and then proceeds to proclaim that these theses are “therefore” wrong or contradictory? Pytell at least admits that to him, Frankl’s “line of reasoning was difficult to follow” (Pytell, 2015, p.  140), but even if so, nobody forced him to discuss issues which he apparently lacks the necessary background knowledge to discuss in the first place. This is also true, incidentally, of Pytell’s brief but thoroughly misguided discussion of some of logotherapy’s therapeutic methods, such as paradoxical intention, which Pytell consistently confuses with symptom prescription (Pytell, 2015, p. 168), or dereflection, which he surprisingly describes as particularly useful for “sex therapy” (ibid.). Although Pytell personally concludes that these two methods either cannot be effective (he does not tell his readers how he arrived at this conclusion) or likely “would have negative consequences” (ibid.), there are numerous empirical and clinical studies that attest to the high clinical efficiency of both methods and logotherapy in general (Batthyany, 2011, 2021; Batthyany & Guttmann, 2005; Thir & Batthyány, 2016). Pytell further insists on calling Frankl’s method of attitude modulation “attitude adaption” (Pytell, 2005, p. 58) and defines it as “instilling a certain stoic attitude” (ibid.)—needless to say that the contrary is the case: attitudinal change is a

2  How Not to Reconstruct History

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therapeutic means to activate patients and to help them out of a fatalistic, passive mind-­set. And Pytell characterizes Frankl’s central concept of the “will to meaning” as a simple emphasis of the will (Pytell, 2005, p. 86; Pytell, 2015, p. 10), whereas a central question in logotherapy and existential analysis (or, in fact, in psychotherapy in general) is not just whether we will or want something, but rather, which wants are worth striving for and pursuing. The addict may have a strong will for something, but undoubtedly, as this example demonstrates, merely wanting something is not the point; the question rather is what we want and why we want it. In each of these cases Pytell has managed to either misrepresent relatively simple basic concepts of logotherapy or even twist them into their opposite. Pytell also asserts that there is “relatively little secondary literature” on logotherapy and existential analysis (Pytell, 2005, p. 15). Given the more than 700 books and dissertations, and approximately 1400 journal articles and book chapters included in the bibliography of the Viktor Frankl Institute (publicly available on its website),2 I consider this an understatement. These are, one could argue, mostly minor and inconsequential errors—and they may be less interesting to the historian as they are for the psychologist or logotherapist. We will come to the historical misrepresentations in due course, as they are the main topic of this book. My point here is that if even relatively accessible facts are misrepresented in Pytell’s work—facts which really anyone can easily check for oneself, then what might this imply for the rest of the story? Q: Before discussing the actual subject matter of the book, it may be interesting to take a closer look at Pytell’s approach. There is after all a difference between research errors and misrepresentation of facts and the interpretation of facts that are per se beyond dispute. A: There is a significant difference between errors and misinterpretations, yet, in the course of this analysis, we will probably discuss many instances where the one affects the other, and vice versa. Generally speaking, Pytell’s understanding of the relationship between research and personal view becomes blatantly obvious at several points, and it certainly does not meet the standard we usually apply to scientific data and their interpretation. For example: Pytell writes that the fact that Frankl (1933, pp. 43–46) reports, in a review article on his activity in youth counseling, that the majority of adolescents consulted him for domestic and sexual problems constitutes proof that Frankl renounced his earlier affiliation with the Socialist movement from the end of the 1920s (Pytell, 2005, p. 55; Pytell, 2015, p. 51). Pytell comments as follows: The rift with leftist politics became apparent when he claimed that most adolescents visited the counseling centers due to sexual and domestic problems (Pytell, 2005, p. 55).

It appears that Pytell assumes that Frankl, had he continued to feel committed to leftist politics, should have (or even could have) presented—or manipulated?—the data to the effect that the majority of adolescents wanted to discuss political or  See http://www.viktorfrankl.org/d/bibD.html for the bibliography.

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social problems. This may at first glance seem like a small matter, but one cannot help wondering what kind of relationship Pytell, a historian at that, has with objective data when he assumes that one can, or should, reinterpret and rephrase data according to one’s personal views and preferences instead of merely reporting the actual data. However, as the table (see Fig. 2.1) shows, this was not simply a claim made offhandedly, but the result of a detailed assessment and inventory of the

Fig. 2.1 Frankl’s summary and statistical analysis of the 3.453 counseling cases at the Jugendberatungsstellen (1930–1933). (© Nachlass August Aichhorn, Archiv Thomas Aichhorn)

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counseling cases, based on data provided by the nineteen counselors active at the Jugendberatungsstellen. And as to misrepresentation, a further example: Pytell summarizes and adds to an article Frankl wrote in 1932/1933. In his counseling work, Frankl endeavored to lead unemployed adolescents to an understanding that regular employment is not the be-all and end-all of their existence. Much rather, he wanted to show them that a lot depended on how these young unemployed dealt with their unemployment—in other words, that they were not just victims of their social and economic circumstances, but also responsible for their own lives. Frankl thus describes in his article how an unemployed adolescent used his unintended spare time to learn English; he also tells of volunteers who did not let their abilities and spare time go to waste but supported a cause that was worthy of support, such as helping out in a soup kitchen for the poor, etc. Written in the years 1932/1933, this article merits attention for several reasons— firstly, this article clearly reveals the origins of logotherapy; secondly, the date (1932/1933) is of interest, in as much as Pytell will subsequently go on to assert in his book that logotherapy had developed years later (though Pytell presents two contradictory models of when and how logotherapy was developed. But we’ll come back to this in due course). For now, I just wanted to show how Pytell operates in his book—using “creative amendments” in the absence of good arguments, if need be. Frankl wrote in said article: The type of the adolescent characterized as apathetic, depressive, neurotic does not – and I cannot emphasize this enough – crave work itself, professional activity as such, as much as an awareness that he is not leading a meaningless life. At least as much as for work and bread, youth yearns for a purpose in life, for an objective and purpose for existence. Young people who […] consulted me beseeched me to task them with some errands or made me some ludicrous offers. (One was bent on tidying up my waiting room after consultation hours, after many people visited my apartment). […] On the other hand, we meet boys and girls who must be thought of as real heroes. On an empty stomach, they work for some organization or other, e.g. as volunteers in libraries or perform janitorial duties in adult education centers. They are alive with their dedication to a cause, to an idea, maybe even a struggle for better times, for a new world that would also solve the problem of unemployment. Their spare time, available – alas – in excess is taken up by useful activity. I have the impression that one underestimates the young generation: in terms of both their capacity for suffering (just consider many a cheerful face in the face of adversity) and their capacity for work (Frankl, 1933, p. 43f.).

Frankl concludes with a concisely worded motto, which can still be considered a guiding principle for the realization of attitudinal values in today’s logotherapy and existential analysis: The suffering person is tasked with “enduring suffering if necessary and alleviating it if possible” (ibid.). Frankl then writes that the unemployed adolescent can find a meaningful purpose, e.g. by engaging in politics. Remember that Frankl himself had been active as a functionary in the Socialist secondary school youth movement a few years earlier. Thus, Frankl writes in his article, the adolescent might even engage in “a struggle for better times or a new world.” In

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Pytell’s text, the quote reads quite differently, as Pytell amends the last sentence with the words “either in the Heimwehr, which was the home-grown Fascist movement inspired by Mussolini, or in the expanding National Socialist movement” (Pytell, 2015, p. 54). The manner in which Pytell finishes the sentence for Frankl must suggest to the reader that Frankl himself makes reference to these movements (approvingly, or at least tolerating them as a conceivable alternative). But nothing could be further from the truth—and little could be more contradictory within Pytell’s own narrative, since he writes, a few lines previously, that Frankl had revived Austro-Marxism with the very same article (ibid.). This is in itself a remarkable claim, which additionally contradicts Pytell’s allegation that the article showed that Frankl had given up his affiliation with left politics and had in any way sought an attachment to Austrofascism (another of Pytell’s claims to which we will turn soon; [Pytell, 2015, p.  58])—which is just as unfounded as the previous allegation that Frankl had revived (or revised) Austro-Marxism with the same article. Another example: Pytell writes in the first chapter of his book that Frankl claimed, in his 1926 article “Psychotherapie und Weltanschauung” [Psychotherapy and Worldview], that intellectualism is neurotic (Pytell, 2005, p. 42; Pytell, 2015, p. 36; 64). This is obviously quite bizarre, after all Frankl was himself a young intellectual. Rather, Frankl in this article first expressed the important notion that there are rational—or “intellectual”—worldviews that are not pathological, but might nonetheless impact the course of psychotherapeutic treatment, because the patient has neither interest nor confidence in getting better, perhaps for ideological reasons (Frankl, 1926, p. 250f.). Frankl here describes how there must be an inner intellectual (or cognitive) commitment to the healing process and the therapy on the part of the patient in order for the therapy to work. Furthermore, Frankl writes in the same article that he had believed in a “universal compensation principle” only a few years previously but was disabused of that notion by Alfred Adler and individual psychology. Pytell even quotes this passage—only to write on the same page, a few lines below: Frankl’s therefore used Adler’s “will to power” to refine his understanding of “universal balancing principle” and Freud’s conception of the death instinct as a possible explanation for negative valuations of life (Pytell, 2015, p. 37).

Yet none of this fits the actual content of the article and its argument. Frankl writes in the clearest of terms that he has renounced the notion of the “universal balancing principle”; and yet Pytell summarizes the article in a manner that suggests the contrary, namely that Frankl combined universal compensation and Adler’s model and Freud’s death instinct (even though Frankl writes in the article that Freud’s concept of a death instinct was in fact an erroneous misreading of positive life forces). Now, in this particular case, this error is of no great consequence; neither does it have further implications for Pytell’s overall narrative. But what is also at issue here is Pytell’s general understanding of what he claims to be “intellectual history,” as well as the significant shortcomings in his willingness or ability to actually intellectually engage with the concepts he claims or attempts to discuss.

2  How Not to Reconstruct History

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I want to make another fundamental point concerning the language employed by Pytell. As we will see, Pytell time and again uses expressions such as “this could mean,” “it seems…,” “maybe…,” etc. The problem is, however, that the interpretations thus toned down by these hypothetical expressions become “facts” by dint of mere repetition throughout the book, and are, after a sufficient number of repetitions, presented with great conviction, suggesting that the fact of Pytell’s expressing an assumption in a previous chapter suffices to turn it into truth in the next one. We will come to this later, too. In stark contrast, however, Pytell harbors an almost boundless distrust of Frankl’s own observations and reports. For example, Pytell writes in his chapter on Frankl’s activity as youth counselor: Frankl claimed that Adlerians could be found among the volunteer counselors of the youth counseling center, including Erwin Wexberg and Rudolf Dreikurs ... (Pytell, 2005, p. 54; emphasis AB).

The fact is, however, that Frankl did not just claim this. The posters and leaflets of the youth counseling center have survived for the most part and Wexberg and Dreikurs are listed in the register of volunteers alongside numerous other Adlerians. Pytell’s implied skepticism is all the more peculiar since these posters are reproduced in several sources cited by Pytell, such as Recollections. An Autobiography (Frankl, 1997) (see Fig. 2.2)—Pytell even quotes from this book. So, it would have been enough just to look at the original poster of the youth counseling centers printed there to ascertain that Wexberg, Dreikurs, and many other Adlerians were among the youth counselors. That is what any reader taking even a moderate interest would have done, and one might expect at least moderate interest in available sources on the part of an historian who writes a book about Frankl. And the book

Fig. 2.2  Detail of the poster for the youth counseling centers founded by Frankl: list of counselors’ names. The poster is reproduced in several of the books Pytell cites.  (© Viktor Frankl Archive, Vienna)

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continues in the same way, page by page, reaching its unfortunate apogee in Pytell’s “description” and interpretation of Frankl’s life and work between the years 1933, or 1938, and 1945.

References Batthyany, A. (2011). Over thirty-five years later: Research in logotherapy since 1975. In V. Frankl (Ed.), Man’s search for ultimate meaning (pp. 169–188). Rider. Batthyány, A. (2021). Recent studies on the clinical relevance and/or effectiveness of logotherapy and existential analysis (2015-2021). VFI Research Dept. Batthyany, A., & Guttmann, D. (2005). Empirical research in logotherapy and meaning-oriented psychotherapy. Zeig, Tucker & Theisen. Batthyány, A., & Lukas, E. (2020). Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse heute. Eine Standortbestimmung. Innsbruck: Tyrolia Finkelde, D., & Livingston, P. M. (Eds.). (2020). Idealism, relativism, and realism: New essays on objectivity beyond the analytic-continental divide. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. Frankl, V.  E. (1933). Wirtschaftskrise und Seelenleben vom Standpunkt des Jugendberaters. Sozialärztliche Rundschau, 4, 43–46. Frankl, V. E. (1955). Pathologie des Zeitgeistes: Rundfunkvorträge über Seelenheilkunde. Deuticke. Frankl, V. E. (1987). Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse: Texte aus fünf Jahrzehnten. Beltz. Frankl, V. E. (1991). Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse: Texte aus sechs Jahrzehnten. Beltz. Frankl, V. E. (1995). Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht. Lebenserinnerungen. Beltz. Frankl, V. E. (1997). Recollections. An autobiography. Plenum Press. Frankl, V.  E. (2011). Ärztliche Seelsorge. Grundlagen der Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Letztauflage. Stand: 2005. In A. Batthyány, K. Biller, & E. Fizzotti (Eds.), Viktor E. Frankl. Gesammelte Werke Band 4. Ärztliche Seelsorge. Grundlagen der Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Und frühe Texte zu einer Sinnorientierten Psychotherapie. Böhlau. Greene, J. A., Azevedo, R., & Torney-Purta, J. (2008). Modeling epistemic and ontological cognition: Philosophical perspectives and methodological directions. Educational Psychologist, 43(3), 142–160. Niiniluoto, I. (1991). Realism, relativism, and constructivism. Synthese, 89(1), 135–162. Pytell, T. (2005). Viktor Frankl – Ende eines Mythos? Studienverlag. Pytell, T. (2015). Viktor Frankl’s search for meaning: An emblematic 20th-century life (Vol. 23). Berghahn Books. Thir, M., & Batthyány, A. (2016). The state of empirical research on logotherapy and existential analysis. In A. Batthyány (Ed.), Logotherapy and existential analysis. Proceedings of the Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna (Vol. 1, pp. 53–74). Springer.

Part II

1925–1940

Chapter 3

1925–1933: From Red Vienna to the Corporative State

Q: Let us go through the accusations and let us start with Austrofascism in Austria before the annexation to Nazi Germany. Pytell alleges that Frankl had sympathized with Schuschnigg’s Austrofascism, and that consequently he became a member of the Vaterländische Front.1 A: This is of course a particularly outlandish idea, especially when one considers how Pytell justifies this alleged “affinity to Schuschnigg” and the Fatherland Front ostensibly discovered by him. Pytell makes reference here to a short paragraph in Frankl’s biographical work, Recollections. An Autobiography. This is indeed the source based on which he attempts to construct these allegations. Unfortunately, Pytell either did not find or chose to ignore, a number of further sources which do in fact imply the opposite, to which I shall refer a little later. But back to Pytell first: Frankl relates in his autobiography how he experienced the evening of Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany in 1938. That evening, Frankl was giving a lecture at the Volkshochschule (community college) housed in the Urania building in Vienna when the door was suddenly opened and an SA man attempted to disrupt the lecture. The man, in full SA uniform, remained in the doorframe, adopting a threatening demeanor. All Nazi activities had been illegal in Austria until then—after all, it had been a central objective for Schuschnigg and his Vaterländische Front to prevent a looming annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany, which is why membership of the NSDAP, not to mention the SA, was prohibited. Frankl writes in his biography that he asked himself at this juncture how it was possible that, under Schuschnigg, an SA man can walk the street in full uniform. I consider this an obvious question, and an understandable expression of surprise. But Pytell deduces from this one astonished question: “Could this have happened 1  “Fatherland Front” (founded in 1933, banned in 1938), a clerical, corporatist, nationalist umbrella organization including the Christian Social Party, as well as other political and paramilitary organizations.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Batthyány, Viktor Frankl and the Shoah, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83063-2_3

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under Schuschnigg?” (Frankl, 1995) that Frankl felt an “affinity” toward Schuschnigg (Pytell, 2005, p.  67). Pytell sees additional evidence for such affinity in the way Frankl writes about the same evening of the “Anschluss”: I hurried home; the Praterstrasse was teaming with singing, roaring, and bawling marchers. At home, I encountered my mother, who was in tears, Schuschnigg had just bid farewell to the people on the radio, now they were playing a dreadfully mournful tune (Frankl, 1995, p. 55).

While Frankl does not mention any of this in the passage of his autobiography quoted by Pytell, Pytell nevertheless writes (probably not without good reason) that, once he reached home, Frankl tried to calm, or console, his mother (Pytell, 2005, p. 66). Based on this short quote, Pytell makes the assertion that Frankl not only lamented the end of Schuschnigg’s government, but that he himself had been a follower of Schuschnigg and his anti-Semitic authoritarian government. Additionally, Pytell found a reference to Frankl’s membership of the Vaterländische Front in his employment file of the time. In his earlier accounts, Pytell takes this as evidence that Frankl sympathized with Austrofascism. Pytell only later found out after I, and perhaps also others informed him that at that time, all employees (Jewish or not) of State institutions, including employees of the psychiatric hospital Steinhof, where Frankl had begun working at the time, were automatically registered as members of the Vaterländische Front. It is even likely that the employees were not even questioned or informed about this, as this was at the time simply part of the employment contract, of commencing the employment relationship. Yet in an interview with Austrian weekly Profil, Pytell (2005, 10:05) claimed—once again without giving any further sources—that Frankl was certainly “fascinated by fascism.” In a more recent text (2017), however, Pytell backpedals, now claiming that he had in fact never said that Frankl was “fascinated” by fascism, professing that this was a translation error on the part of the Austrian magazine Profil: When my truncated biography of Frankl was published in Vienna in 2005 titled Das Ende Eines Mythos? I was interviewed by Profil magazine (Austria’s version of Time) for an issue celebrating the centennial of Frankl’s birth. In a sidebar interview box I was pictured with the headline that stated, “"Pytell says Frankl was “fasciniertz” [sic!—AB] with fascism." I had actually told the interviewer that Frankl was “interested” in fascism, but the “mistranslation” was headline-grabbing and perhaps tapped the subconscious feeling of many Austrians. I still maintain that Frankl was “interested” in fascism and ironically for therapeutic potential (Pytell, 2017).

However, it is somewhat difficult to believe this new narrative, because, firstly, Pytell would have had more than 12 full years to rectify the erstwhile alleged “mistranslation” on the part of Profil. Secondly, the English words “interested” (German: “interessiert”) and “fascinated” (German: “fasziniert”) are distinct enough not to give rise to ambiguity errors when translated into German. And, thirdly, Pytell has also maintained, in conversation with me, that Frankl was “fascinated” by fascism. And to imply that the journalists and editors of a well-established publication like Profil had such poor command of the English language that they failed to distinguish between “fascinated” and “interested” (which, after all, merely differ in their endings when translated into German) seems somewhat disingenuous, especially

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given the fact that the interview itself was conducted in English—which suggests that the interviewer had some command of English, at least enough to conduct an interview with Pytell. Anyway—in sum, these are the three “arguments” that Pytell invokes in support of Frankl’s alleged “fascination” for or “interest” in Austrofascism: the first distorts Frankl’s understandable astonishment and concern when he was first confronted with an SA man in full uniform and crowds cheering the Nazis in the streets— whereas I am not sure how Frankl’s conduct could be interpreted in any other way than what was, under the circumstances, the most obvious reaction: astonishment and concern. Pytell’s second “argument” ignores Frankl’s biography and his marginalization as a Jewish doctor at Steinhof: For we do have documented evidence that Frankl, despite excellent references and a number of important publications, was not tenured at the psychiatric hospital Steinhof—precisely because he was a Jew, and as such rejected by the anti-Semitic city council in the Catholic corporate state. Frankl was thus, if anything, a victim of the erstwhile Austrofascist anti-Semitism. And the third one reveals his erstwhile ignorance of the historical fact that public employees were automatically registered with the Vaterländische Front. Additionally, when it comes to hard and historical evidence on Frankl’s real political views during these years, one publication deserves particular mention: In 1935, Frankl published a highly interesting article on Jewish values and worship in psychiatric treatment in the Mitteilungsblatt der Vereinigung jüdischer Ärzte (Frankl, 1935a, b, pp. 6 and 7)—a journal that was a strong voice for vocal critics of Schuschnigg’s corporate state and its rampant anti-Semitism: The paper initially intervened against the wave of layoffs that affected dissidents within the medical fraternity, or individuals persecuted for party political reasons, after the civil war in February 1934. After the establishment of “Austrofascism,” the publication continued to criticize structurally consolidating anti-Semitism, which found its expression in the professional exclusion of Jewish physicians from public health establishments, their discrimination in terms of appointments to professional and representative positions or vis-à-vis social insurance agencies, as well as public attacks against Jewish physicians. From 1933, the association provided assistance to Jewish colleagues who fled to Austria after the Nazi takeover in Germany, organized relief efforts, e.g. Winter assistance, for impoverished doctors, who had become destitute as a result of the layoffs. […] after the “Anschluss” in March 1938, the association had to discontinue its activities, as its members faced persecution by the Nazis. In July 1938, the association was dissolved and liquidated […] by the Liquidation Commissar for Societies, Organizations, and Associations. (Vereinigung und Mitteilungsblatt 2020)

Would someone who embraces the corporate state affiliate himself with an Association and publish in a journal that takes a clear stance against the corporate state and the Fatherland Front—especially given how authoritarian, ruthlessly censoring and controlling, the Ständestaat was? To date, Pytell is alone in suggesting, against the facts and in the absence of any sources, or at least circumstantial indications, such an approval or fascination or, more recently, interest.

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References Frankl, V. E. (1935a). Ein häufiges Phänomen bei Schizophrenie. Zeitschrift für Neurologie und Psychiatrie, 152, 161–162. Frankl, V.  E. (1935b). Kol nidre auf dem Steinhof. Mitteilungsblatt der Vereinigung jüdischer Ärzte, 22, 6–7. Frankl, V. E. (1995). Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht. Lebenserinnerungen. Beltz. Pytell, T. (2005). Viktor Frankl – Ende eines Mythos? Studienverlag. Pytell, T. (2017). Is there a fascist impulse in all of us? Insights from a Viktor Frankl biographer. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/authoritarian-­therapy/201702/ is-­there-­fascist-­impulse-­in-­all-­us University of Vienna (2020). Entry on the Mitteilungsblatt and the Vereinigung jüdischer Ärzte in Wien.

Chapter 4

1936–1940: The Medical Society for Psychotherapy and the Göring Institute (Berlin/Vienna)

Q: Moving on the 1938, i.e. Frankl’s life and work after the “Anschuss”—Pytell maintains that Frankl worked at the National Socialist Göring Institute in Vienna from the late 1930s, and that he developed his logotherapy there. Could you comment on that? A: Pytell in fact insists that Frankl had begun to approach the then illegal NSDAP before the ‘Anschluss’ which makes little sense, even in terms of Pytell’s own internal logic, as he simultaneously labels Frankl as a sympathizer of Austrofascism and, at the same time, as reviving Austro-Marxism and thus, in both cases, as an ideological opponent of the National Socialists. Pytell thus asserts no less than that Frankl had squared the circle and simultaneously associated himself with three mutually exclusive political ideologies. What we do know, however, is that Frankl had at that time (mid to end 1930s) no longer believed in the power of the collective, but in the significance of the individual. During these years, Frankl had discovered the works of Max Scheler (personalism). Fascism, Marxism, and National Socialism, on the other hand, are ideologies that are emphatically collective, that can only be implemented collectively, while Frankl at the time already put his hope in, and concentrated his research on, the individual (personalism). He was, however, as we will soon discuss, involved in the Zionist movement during these years. Q: Let’s continue with the most serious allegation: How does Pytell justify his assertion that Frankl had approached the National Socialists’ “German Psychotherapy Movement?” A: Pytell (2005) argues as follows: In 1934/1935, Frankl published an article “A frequent phenomenon with schizophrenia” (Frankl, 1935b). In this article, Frankl describes what he calls the corrugator phenomenon—namely, Frankl had observed that his schizophrenic patients exhibited a certain type of facial spasms when speaking. A similar phenomenon had previously been described by Bleuler (who called it © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Batthyány, Viktor Frankl and the Shoah, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83063-2_4

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“sheet lightning”), but Frankl noticed that the spasms of the brow musculature (corrugator) observed by him differed from Bleuler’s “sheet lightning” in that they mainly occurred when psychotic patients try to focus their attention on responsive conversation. The “corrugator phenomenon”—which Pytell, incidentally, consistently confuses with Bleuler’s “sheet lightning” (Pytell, 2005, p.  68)—remains a topic of contemporary schizophrenia research to this day (Kring & Earnst, 2003; Earnst et al., 1996). Pytell finds “two aspects of this article noteworthy.” I will quote this verbatim, because it shows how Pytell constructs his “arguments”: Two aspects of this article were noteworthy. Firstly, Frankl quotes Carl Gustav Carus. In substance, the mention of Carus […] is not particularly interesting. However, Carus was an important source, invoked by the German psychotherapists of the third Reich in an effort to create a tradition that negated Freud’s role. Frankl’s citation was a first suggestion – and no more than a suggestion – that Frankl was turning towards the German Psychotherapy Movement (Pytell, 2005, p. 69).

I was probably not the only one to be unfamiliar with the name Carus in the first place. And, given the way Pytell presents this, I was probably also not alone in assuming that Carus actually might have been an important pioneer of the “German Psychotherapy Movement” and critic of psychoanalysis. This conjecture, at any rate, suggests itself, or is being suggested here, since Pytell sees no less than “a first suggestion” of Frankl’s shift towards the National Socialists’ German Psychotherapy Movement in the mere mention of the name Carus. However, Carl Gustav Carus—incidentally, a contemporary and correspondent of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt—was Physician-in-­ Ordinary at the court of Saxony, as well as one of the founding fathers of modern comparative anatomy.1 Today, the Dresden university hospital is named after him, several important research awards bear his name, etc. Given the time frame, as well as his profile, it is therefore difficult to reconcile Carus (1789–1869) with the role implied by Pytell. However, the next and probably more important question is: how about the content, i.e. the actual work and thought of Carus? Carus, against the backdrop of the anthropological thinking of his time, stood in an anthropological research tradition that had its roots in the comparative anthropology established by Johann Gottfried Herder, Montesquieu and Immanuel Kant. But can Carus be brought into play to “refute Freud’s role?” While the National Socialists used anything and anyone for their purposes, Carus, of all people, does not seem like a very good witness against Freud. Firstly, Carus established himself as one of the precursors of depth psychology and psychodynamics through his early insights into the role of the unconscious as the “key to an understanding of the nature of mind and consciousness” and 1  For more on Carus and especially his role in the psychology of the unconscious and the development of depth psychology, see Graber, G.H (1926). C.G Carus. Ein Vorläufer der Psychoanalyse. Imago 12, Nr. 4, p.  513-523. See also Abeln, R. (1970) Unbewußtes und Unterbewußtsein bei Carus und Aristoteles. Meisenheim:Anton Hain.Kuhlmann-Hodick, P., Spitzer, G., & Maaz, B. (2009). Carl Gustav Carus. Hamburg: Deutscher Kunstverlag; Köppe, W. (1983). Carl Gustav Carus. In: Rattner (Ed.). Vorläufer der Tiefenpsychologie. Vienna: Europa Verlag, p. 57-80.

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secondly, many psychoanalysts have referred to Carus, and continue to do so, precisely because of his historical position as pioneer researcher of the unconscious and its role in psychodynamics (e.g. Abeln, 1970). Carus’ work on the unconscious was in fact so ground-breaking that he was frequently quoted in psychological literature: Alfred Adler (1972) refers to Carus, as well as Pierre Janet and C.G. Jung. Carus’ works were also important precursors and sources of ideas of Eduard von Hartmann’s protopsychological works, as well as von Scherner’s trauma theory (Ellenberger, 1973; Hehlmann, 1963). In brief, Carus was a central reference for early theoreticians of the psychology of the unconscious and thus hardly a key witness against psychoanalysis. At any event, Frankl’s reference would probably have been just as much of “a first suggestion […] that Frankl was turning towards the NS Psychotherapy Movement” in Pytell’s eyes if Frankl had quoted one of the following historical personalities: Goethe, Novalis, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Leibniz, etc. For all these names served the Nazis to develop a romanticizing view of the “Germanic soul” and “National Socialist psychology.” The very same names, however, also served Thomas Mann in his passionate radio lectures from exile against the Nazis. What is more, the Carus quote used by Frankl states that people of all cultures and ethnic groups furrow their brow when confused. This, then, is Pytell’s “first indication for Frankl’s move towards the German psychotherapy movement”: it stems from a classic of comparative anatomy and pioneer of depth psychology and deals with the phenomenon of frowning. So much for “the first suggestion.” Q: Now, Pytell writes in the passage quoted above that “two things are significant in this article.” A: Yes, but strangely enough, for his second indication Pytell does not make reference to the article in question, but to the psychiatric hospital Steinhof, where Frankl worked at the time. Here too, I would like to quote Pytell’s own words: The second significant indication… (Pytell, 2005, p. 68)

... please note, by the way, how Pytell manipulates his readers in this instance: while he considered the Carus quotation as “nothing more than a suggestion” a moment ago (ibid.)—and, as we have seen, it is not even that—a few lines further down, the same Carus quotation is the first of two “significant” indications. What is more, Pytell wrote at the outset that the article involves two indications; the second—“significant”—indication does not refer to the article at all. Instead, it reads as follows: The second significant indication [for Frankl’s shift towards the Reichsgerman psychotherapy movement] was Frankl’s superior at Steinhof hospital, Dr. Alfred Mauczka, director and provincial surgeon-general. On 15 April 1940, Mauczka applied for membership in the National Socialist party and was a “Kriegsteilnehmer” [combatant]. That Mauczka became a National Socialist is not a surprising development… (Pytell goes on to describe that there were many Nazis at Steinhof at the time and generally discusses the question of how National Socialism and psychotherapy related to each other. He does not mention Frankl at all in the next one and a half pages) (Pytell, 2005, p. 68ff.; the claim that Mauczka applied for membership in the NSDAP is repeated in Pytell, 2015, p. 64).

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This is the second “significant indication” and, like presumably most readers, I cannot help wondering wherein this “second significant indication” actually consisted: What logical link might there be between Frankl and his political stance on the one hand, and the fact that his superior within the hospital staff allegedly (see below) applied for membership in the NSDAP no less than 6 years after the publication of Frankl’s article on the other? Unfortunately, Pytell does not elaborate on this either. However, Pytell’s mention of Mauczka is interesting for a different reason: it offers an explanation for the fact that the hospital management of the Steinhof clinic ignored Frankl for years as a Jew when it came to tenure at Steinhof, while younger, “Aryan” doctors were tenured without further ado. Or rather, this would be an interesting and historically useful piece of information if Pytell did not consistently prove to be too unreliable a source to permit valid conclusions. According to Wolfgang Neugebauer, one of the foremost historians of Austrian medicine during the Nazi regime and head of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstands, Wien), “Mauczka was one of the few non-Nazis at Steinhof” (Neugebauer, 1999, p. 143; see also Appendix for a detailed assessment of Pytell’s false claim that Mauczka was a Parteianwärter of the NSDAP), which renders Pytell’s “second significant indication” even more untenable. According to Neugebauer and Schwarz, it turns out that Pytell either confused or misrepresented Mauczka’s membership application to the Reich Chamber of Physicians with a membership application to the NSDAP. We furthermore know about Mauczka that he was one of the few physicians at Steinhof to actively protest against the murder of patients under the T4 (euthanasia) program: Mauczka’s protest [finally resulted in – AB] his forced sick leave, because he did not consent to early retirement. According to his own testimony he was not a member of the NSDAP, either. His rejective attitude towards later “euthanasia” campaigns may have been decisive for this measure “from up high.” On 1.1.1944, he was succeeded by Dr. Hans Bertha, “T4” evaluator and, alongside Dr. Erwin Jekelius, one of the main organizers of euthanasia in Vienna (Ertl, 2012).

In any case—the fact that there were indeed numerous Nazi sympathizers and anti-­ Semites at the Steinhof hospital, and that they did not make Frankl’s life and work there any easier, is well established. Indeed, Frankl relates in his autobiography how much he longed for his life with his parents in Leopoldstadt2 while at Steinhof. Given the political climate prevalent at Steinhof at the time, this makes perfect sense. Unsurprisingly, Pytell, though he does not usually hold back with interpretations and judgments, does not mention this point at all. And Pytell also fails to look at and discuss the larger implications of another aspect of Frankl’s work at Steinhof, which I want to touch upon at this juncture, because, firstly, it is not given much attention even within Logotherapy and, secondly, because it provides probably the best—historically documented and corroborated—information regarding Frankl’s political thinking at the time. As already mentioned, Frankl reports, in an article published in the Mitteilungsblatt der

 Vienna’s second district, at that time the district with the highest Jewish population in Vienna.

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Vereinigung jüdischer Ärzte in 1935, about the Yom Kippur celebration organized by him and a colleague for psychotic Jewish patients at Steinhof: Some 40 patients were gathered Erev Yom Kippur in the so-called Kursaal of Pavilion 2. Notwithstanding the improvised nature of the celebration, the atmosphere in the small hall was not without solemnity. At the short side, there was a cupboard covered with red cloth, containing the Torah, in front of it a table with candlesticks, next to it a lectern for the prayer leader. […] Rabbi Béla Fischer appeared. [...] Softly, fervently, he sang the ancient melody of Kol Nidre. Some patients hum the prayers in the traditional incantation. But many remain impassive; the flow of fervent prayer has not captured them yet, has not connected them with one another or attuned them to pious devotion. Individual psychotics are still quietly talking to themselves, their empty gaze wandering aimlessly through the hall, when the Rabbi turns to face them serving man also means serving God – he is now talking in German. He vividly explains to them the meaning of what has just been […] said – and they pay attention! He continues in this way for an hour, the next day for six hours. He soon found out what the suffering soul craves: to wrest it from the realm of delusion, to fight for attention again and again – to keep the sufferers occupied. This work required much empathy, adjustment, patience, and sociability (Frankl, 1935a, b, p. 6f.)

Is this what a tactical “shift towards the program of National Socialist psychotherapy” looks like? Q: Pytell alleges and criticizes that Frankl participated in the work of the Göring Institute in Vienna. Would you like to comment? A: First of all, it needs to be pointed out that what Pytell labels “Göring Institute” (its official designation was “German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy”) has a longer, and certainly more complex history, both in Germany and even more so its branch in Vienna. None of this is taken into consideration, let alone even mentioned by Pytell. Pytell in fact simply skips over the historical development of what would later become the Göring Institute (and, still later on, its Austrian Arbeitsgemeinschaft, i.e. branch) and writes: I use the term Göring Institute as shorthand for the German dominance over the affairs of the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy’ (Pytell, 2015, p. 65).

But the historical documents tell a very different story. Pytell thus misrepresents the actual history of these institutions in Germany; and his version of the history of the Austrian branch is even more misleading: In 1927/1928, the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy (IGMSP) was founded by Goldstein, Hahn, Arthur Kronfeld, Ernst Kretschmer and Wladimir Eliasberg. Pytell wrongly states that the International Society was only formed in 1933 (Pytell, 2005, p. 68), quoting Geoffrey Cocks’ standard work as his source; the latter, however, points out that the General Society was founded in 19283 (with members in Austria, Germany, 3  Cocks, G. (1985). Psychotherapy in the Third Reich. The Göring Institute. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Among its 400 members we also find the 3 person who next to Freud played an important role in Frankl’s scientific and intellectual development (and Austrian psychotherapy in general): Alfred Adler, Oswald Schwarz, and Rudolf Allers; but also Carl Gustav Jung, Ernst Simmel, Erwin Wexberg, Georg Groddeck and Hans von Hattingberg, Paul Schilder, Wilhelm Reich and Wilhelm Stekel, Kurt Goldstein and Viktor von Weizsäcker, Ernst Kretschmer, Eugen

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Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Spain, France, and Holland). For whatever reason, however, the Germans felt it necessary to establish their own German section within the International Society even before the National Socialist takeover in Germany—perhaps precisely because, contrary to what Pytell assumes, the Germans did not consider the International Society “German” enough. In 1933, the year of the Nazi takeover in Germany, Matthias Heinrich Göring, a cousin of the future Reich Marshall Hermann Göring, took over the running of the German Section within the International Society. This section enjoyed a certain degree of independence under the supranational organization of the international Society, which continued to be chaired by C.G. Jung in Switzerland. In September 1933, the Deutsche Allgemeine Ärztliche Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie (German General Medical Society for Psychotherapy) emerged from the German section of the International Society as a separate institution. And only 3 years later, in 1936, the Deutsche Institut für psychologische Forschung und Psychotherapie (German Institute for psychological research and psychotherapy)— this was the so-called Göring Institute—was established in Berlin as an independent institution. In the very same year, but under politically very different circumstances (Austria was still governed by the Vaterländische Front and all Nazi activities were strictly prohibited), i.e. in 1936, a Vienna affiliate or chapter of the International Society was founded—the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie und psychische Hygiene (Austrian Society for Psychotherapy and Mental Hygiene). Frankl was a regular attendant of the meetings of this Society in its founding year, 1936. Pytell, however, turns this into a membership in and, finally, work for the Vienna branch of the Göring Institute. However, as both the historical literature4 and original reports (see Fig.  4.1) unequivocally show, the Austrian Society for Psychotherapy and Mental Hygiene whose seminars Frankl attended was not, as Pytell claims, an offshoot of the Göring Institute (or even its predecessor, i.e. the German Section or the German Society) but an affiliate or chapter of the International Society. Anything else would be difficult to assume, if only because most of the members of this newly founded Austrian chapter of the International Society were Jewish, some were psychoanalysts or individual psychologists (i.e. Adlerians)—hardly compatible with the program of the German Göring Institute to rid psychotherapy of “Jewish influence” and propagate

Bleuler, Ludwig Binswanger, Max Isserlin, Robert Sommer, Victor-Emil von Gebsattel as well as Walter Morgenthaler, sowie Albert Moll, Magnus Hirschfeld, Max Marcuse, Kurt Lewin, Narziß Ach, and Pál Ranschburg. 4  See, for example, the excellent, and arguably most complete study on the Vienna Göring Institute, drawing largely on the archive of Thomas Aichhorn, de facto director of the Vienna Göring Institute: Aichhorn, T. & Rothländer, C. (2012). Zur Errichtung der Wiener Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Göring-Instituts und der Arbeits- und Ausbildungsgruppe von August Aichhorn. In: Ash, M. G., & Aichhorn, T. (2012). Materialien zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse in Wien 1938-1945. Frankfurt: Brandes & Apsel, p. 347ff.

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Fig. 4.1 Membership list (with entry date and status of membership) of the Vienna Arbeitsgemeinschaft of the Göring Institut. (© Nachlass August Aichhorn, Archiv Thomas Aichhorn)

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Fig. 4.1 (continued)

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37

a new “Aryan” form of psychotherapy. And indeed, most of the members of the Austrian Society for Psychotherapy and Mental Hygiene lost their license for “racial reasons” and/or emigrated or were deported to the concentration camps soon after the “Anschluss”: Karl Nowotny, Wladimir Eliasberg, Erich Wellisch, Heinrich Loewy, Rudolf Allers and Viktor Frankl. The Göring Institute, on the other hand, did indeed establish an Austrian subsidiary (Arbeitsgemeinschaft)—yet not in 1936, but in 1938, hence after the “Anschluss,” when the Austrian chapter of the International Society was dissolved— precisely because it was not politically aligned with the Nazis and additionally, because the majority of its members were, as Frankl, Jewish. Anything else would have been inconceivable, as the Göring Institute pursued an explicitly National Socialist agenda, which, given the Fatherland Front’s ban on the Nazis in Austria, would have been impossible in Vienna before the “Anschluss” of 1938 anyway. For the program of the Göring Institute was nothing if not crystal clear about its political alignment. It reached out to practitioners who intended to: […] espouse and apply a view of psychotherapy in the spirit of National Socialist ideology.

Hence Pytell decision to “use the term Göring Institute as shorthand” leads to a misrepresentation not only of the actual circumstances in Austria in 1936 and 1938, but to his false claim that Frankl worked for the Göring Institute when he in fact attended lectures at the Austrian affiliate of the International Society, the Austrian Society for Psychotherapy and Mental Hygiene. It is, however, also possible, that here too, Pytell simply mixed up or misread the documents—just as he mistook Mauczka’s application for the Reich Chamber of Physicians for an application to the NSDAP—and thus failed to notice the different political and scientific programs of the Austrian affiliate of the International Society (founded 1936—dissolved in March 1938) and the Vienna Working Group of the Göring Institute (founded in March 1938–1945). At any rate, we know—and the documents show—that Frankl was active in the Austrian Society for Psychotherapy and Mental Hygiene in 1936. Pytell, however, because he insists on using his “shorthand” misrepresentation, claims that Frankl worked for a Vienna branch of the Göring Institute—again: in 1936—which is based on his erroneous idea that the Göring Institute established a local section in Vienna in March of the same year—1936; and which is factually wrong. Note that Pytell’s erroneous dating of the alleged establishment of the Göring Institute in Vienna in 1936 is the only basis of his claim that Frankl “worked” for the Vienna branch of Göring Institute in the first place. And—though less importantly— as to the claim that Frankl “worked” at either institution, it is worthwhile to point out that in fact, according to the protocols (see Fig. 4.2), Frankl did not hold any office at the Austrian chapter of the International Society, but was among the audience of four lectures, which were held—I emphasize this once again—at the Austrian Society for Psychotherapy and Mental Hygiene  in 1936, and not at the Göring Institute in 1938. However, Pytell is not particularly consistent in his chronological dating of the foundation of the Göring Institute anyway, as he continues to alter the dates of the

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Fig. 4.2  List entry for the newly founded Austrian section of the General International Medical Society for Psychotherapy in March 1936, thus 2 years before the “Anschluss,” i.e. at a time when National Socialist activity was still prohibited in Austria. Pytell, however, erroneously dates the establishment of the Austrian chapter with the year 1938, i.e. after the “Anschluss” and therefore erroneously holds it to be a Vienna branch of the Göring Institute. Only against this background is he able to construe Frankl’s involvement in the Vienna Göring Institute. But the Vienna Göring Institute was in fact founded in 1938, and its protocols clearly show that Frankl neither a member nor an attendant of this group. (Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie, 36)

establishment and disbandment of the Göring Institute to suit his narrative: at one point he suggests that the Göring Institute was established in 1933 (Pytell, 2005, p. 68), then again in 1936 (Pytell, 2005, p. 69). Then again, Pytell asserts that the Institute was disbanded in 1938, only to write, after only a few lines, that it “maintained its parastatal status” until 1945, which seems to presuppose that it continued to exist after 1938. The 1938 date of disbandment advanced by Pytell may refer to the Austrian affiliate of the International Society, in which case it would be correct—except that Pytell obfuscates the gaps between the foundation of the International Society, the foundation of the German section, the foundation of the German Society, the foundation of the Göring Institute in Berlin, the foundation of the Austrian affiliate of the International Society (the Austrian Society for Psychotherapy and Mental Hygiene), and the foundation of the Viennese branch of the Göring Institute; otherwise, he couldn’t have claimed that Frankl was in any way affiliated with the latter. The sources, however, are quite clear in this regard. At the time (spring 1938), Göring himself wrote, in the German Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, that his activities in Vienna (i.e. the Vienna Arbeitsgemeinschaft of the Göring Institute) were only made possible by and after the “Anschluss” (1938), and that an offshoot of sorts of the Berlin Göring Institute was soon established in Vienna in the same year (1938), and not before:

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The bastion of Jewish psychotherapy in Vienna was brought down by the Anschluss. We managed to gather a small group of German psychotherapists in a small working group, which is affiliated with the above-mentioned Institute [the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy/Göring Institute – AB]. (Göring, 1938a, b, p. 410)

Göring’s account thus further illustrates that he could not simply fall back on the existing (at any rate, “far too Jewish”) membership of the Austrian chapter of the International Society in order to create a Vienna Göring Institute after the “Anschluss,” but that a separate, “non-Jewish” working group of the Göring Institute had to be established. This is further corroborated by Göring’s correspondence: In a letter of 15th of March 1938, i.e. only days after the “Anschluss,” Göring wrote to the chairman of the Austrian Section of the International Society, Heinrich von Kogerer, suggesting to him to disband the Austrian chapter and to replace it with a Viennese working group of the Göring Institute: May I suggest that you disband your national chapter and to notify the president of the International Society thereof. We would be delighted if you put in place a working group in Austria; the working groups are not affiliated with the German Society, but with the Institute [for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy; i.e. the Göring Institute - AB].5

In brief: Pytell maintains, or rather, alleges that Frankl was “active” at the Viennese Arbeitsgemeinschaft of the Göring Institute in 1936—whereas the source material clearly shows that a Viennese offshoot of the Göring Institute did not even exist in 1936. Additional evidence comes from the actual membership lists of the Vienna Arbeitsgemeinschaft of the Göring Institute, which includes both regular members and candidates (see Fig. 4.1); and of course, there were no Jewish members, nor of course, was Frankl a member or candidate member of the Göring Institute. Hence Pytell’s allegation that Frankl contributed to the Göring Institute and wanted to “make a name for himself” there is based on, firstly, erroneous dating of the foundation of the Viennese Göring Institute and, secondly, a confusion of the Austrian chapter of the International Medical Society, the German Society, and the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy (Göring Institute). Q: But does not Pytell maintain that Frankl participated in four seminars of what he calls the Vienna Göring Institute in 1936–1937? A: Yes and no. It is somewhat puzzling that Pytell would write that any such seminars took place in 1937, for the sources clearly show that no seminars were held in 1937. Frankl in fact participated in four seminars in 1936 (again, at the Austrian affiliate of the International Society). Secondly, Frankl’s “participation” consisted of attending four lectures/seminars. To substantiate this, Pytell (correctly) quotes an activity report from the year 1936, published in the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie 5  The letter from Matthias Heinrich Göring to Heinrich von Kogerer, 15.03.1938, BArch, ZSG 161/2, is partly reprinted in: Aichhorn, T. & Rothländer, C. (2012). Zur Errichtung der Wiener Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Göring-Instituts und der Arbeits- und Ausbildungsgruppe von August Aichhorn. In: Ash, M. G., & Aichhorn, T. (2012). Materialien zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse in Wien 1938-1945. Frankfurt: Brandes & Apsel, p. 347f.

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(1937). That same issue also includes yet another unequivocal and clarifying footnote concerning the venue and organizer of these lectures (p.  9)—the Austrian Society for Psychotherapy and Mental Hygiene as the “Austrian chapter of the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy”6 (see Figs. 4.1 and 4.2). As mentioned before, that was, in any case, the only possible scenario, since the Vienna Göring Institute was not yet in existence in 1936 (or 1937) and held its first session only in 1939.7 Q: Could not the distinction you make between the different institutions be a mere formality? Maybe these institutions were only nominally distinct from each other?

Fig. 4.3  Minutes of the inaugural assembly of the Austrian chapter of the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy in Vienna. Contrary to Pytell’s misrepresentation, all meetings that included inter-alia Frankl took place in 1936, in other words: before the annexation of Austria. (Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie, 37). Only in 1938, Göring reports in the Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift that an institute of “German psychotherapists in Vienna” was founded “after the Anschluss”  Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie, Bd. 10 (1937), p. 9.  For additional evidence, see Aichhorn, T. (Ed.) (2012). Die Psychoanalyse kann nur dort gedeihen,wo Freiheit des Gedankens herrscht. Briefwechsel Anna Freud – August Aichhorn 1921-1949. Frankfurt: Brandes und Apsel, p. 128. 6 7

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A: No, these are not merely formal questions of which society was founded when and under which name; the main question is what the political program of the respective institution consisted of. This is also programmatically reflected in the four lectures/seminars that Frankl attended from the floor. For the program is not by any stretch of imagination what Pytell tries to make it look like. The Viennese chapter of the International General Medical Society was by no means a “germanomanic” institution in terms of its work and positioning, which is evidenced by both the topics under discussion during the lectures and the participants (see Fig. 4.2). The lectures attended by Frankl had the following topics (and, perhaps even more importantly, dates): in the first and second one, H. Kogerer gave a presentation about the limits of psychology (March 31 and May 5, 1936), in the third (November 3, 1936), Kogerer reported on a congress of the European Association for Mental Hygiene in London; the fourth presentation (the last one to be attended by Frankl) was by the Jewish psychiatrist Erwin Stransky, on the then controversial subject of race and psychiatry (December 1, 1936).8 Unfortunately, no comments by the attending psychiatrists have survived. We additionally do know, however, who was in attendance during the presentations at the Viennese chapter of the International Society. According to the protocol they were, alongside Viktor Frankl: Karl Nowotny (co-founder of the International Association for Individual Psychology; he lost his employment as a medical doctor after the “Anschluss” for “racial reasons”), Wladimir Eliasberg (emigrated to the USA in 1938), Erich Wellisch (emigrated to the USA in 1939), Heinrich Loewy (emigrated to Jerusalem in 1939), Josef Berze, Otto Kauders (emigrated to the USA in 1939), Rudolf Allers (emigrated to the USA in 1938) and probably Oswald Schwarz (emigrated to Great Britain in 1938), and, of course Frankl (deported in 1942 after being protected against deportation because he worked at the last Jewish hospital until it was taken over by the SS in 1942). All of them individuals who were demonstrably not inclined to collaborate with the Nazis (or indeed eligible to do so under ‘racial criteria’). Once again, Pytell makes no mention of this fact; and it would be difficult indeed to argue that this group of people would constitute the Vienna branch of the National Socialist Vienna Göring Institute. Let’s sum this up once again, for it might be somewhat confusing: Frankl attended lectures/seminars that were organized by the Austrian chapter of the International General Society (Austrian Society for Psychotherapy and Mental Hygiene)—not by the German Society, nor by the Göring Institute. Pytell’s subsequent assertions, such as his claim that Frankl “hoped to institutionally root his logotherapy” in the (as yet non-existent) Viennese Göring Institute (Pytell, 2005, p. 73), must also be read and evaluated in light of this. The picture that emerges here is not exactly coherent, particularly given the fact that the Austrian chapter of the International Medical Society, too, was a short-lived and relatively inactive initiative. We should also remember that Frankl, informed by his 8  Taken from the Protokoll der Gründungsversammlung der Landesgruppe Österreich der internationalen Allgemeinen Ärztlichen Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie. Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie, Bd. 10 (1937), p. 7f.

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experience with the Association for Individual Psychology, sensed at the time that he would best be able to develop his logotherapy and existential analysis freely, unhindered by institutional ties. Apart from that, the question therefore arises whether Frankl actually wanted such an anchoring at all (available documents contradict this); and if at all, why he would have chosen the short-lived and barely active Austrian section of the International Medical Society. But this is secondary. Of much more significance is the fact that, based on the attendance of four lectures, Pytell wants to cobble together an involvement in an institute that did not even exist during the years in question— in other words, as a result of his misdating the foundation of the Göring Institute, he assigns Frankl to the latter, as opposed to the Vienna chapter of the International Society. Q: What is known about Frankl’s political views at that time? Was he politically active at all? A: In 1938, the year of the “Anschluss” (and the actual founding of the Vienna branch of the Göring Institute), Frankl did indeed give lectures at political venues, namely at the Vienna section of the World Zionist Organization (see Figs. 4.4 and 4.5). The last announcement of such a public lecture (“On spiritual problems among Jewish Youth”) appeared in the last issue of the Stimme—the newspaper of the Austrian chapter of the Zionist Organization—on March 11, 1938, thus on the eve of the “Anschluss.” Needless to say, the newspaper could no longer be published after the “Anschluss” as the Zionist Organization was closed and its two editors, Jakob Ehrlich and Oskar Grünbaum, were immediately arrested by the Gestapo as officials of a Zionist Organization; Ehrlich died at Dachau in summer 1938. Frankl’s last announced lecture was scheduled to take place after the “Anschluss,” on March 15, 1938—it is thus unlikely that he was able to give it at all. Incidentally, the talk was thus scheduled to, but could not, given political circumstances, take place on the very same day that back in Berlin, Matthias Heinrich Göring reached out and suggested that an Arbeitsgemeinschaft of the Göring Institute be founded in Vienna. Either way—this is what emerges from the real historical documents: like many others Jewish intellectuals who were troubled by the increasingly precarious situation of Jews in Austria, Frankl turned towards the Zionist movement in the late 1930s, perhaps even earlier than that. The mission of the Zionist movement was to preserve and defend a strong Jewish identity in the face of an anti-Semitism that was already rife and growing under the Christian-Social Party, what to speak of the anti-­ Semitism of the Nazis. For whatever reason, Pytell makes no mention of this crucial information. Q: Pytell instead writes that Frankl’s most important contribution to the Göring Institute was an article in its journal, the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie, and that Frankl (therefore) developed logotherapy “at the Göring Institute.” A: This is easily and quickly explained, for it is based on the very same “mix-up” as above: the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie (founded in 1928) was the journal of the International Society and not, as Pytell writes, of the Göring Institute. This is

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Fig. 4.4  Announcement, in the “Zionistischer Veranstaltungskalender” in the “Stimme” (periodical of the Austrian chapter of the Zionist Organization [Zionistischer Landesverband Österreich]) lecture by Viktor Frankl, “The Spiritual Suffering of Jewish Youth,” 15 February, 1938

clearly discernible even on the cover and title pages as well as the imprint (see Fig.  4.6). Its imprint states: Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie [...], Journal of the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy. Q: Did the Göring Institute have its own journal? Was this not also the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie?

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Fig. 4.5  Announcement, in the “Zionistischer Veranstaltungskalender,” in the last issue of the “Stimme” 11 March, 1938 (one day before the “Anschluss”)—lecture by Viktor Frankl, “Spiritual Problems of Jewish Youth,” 15 March, 1938.

A: No—the Göring Institute had its own newsletter for National Socialist psychotherapists. The Zentralblatt was published by C.G. Jung in his capacity of head of the International Society; and Jung had made clear in a circular that the Zentralblatt was, and would remain, not a political mouthpiece, and retain its political neutrality. Frankl’s mentor Rudolf Allers was involved from 1933 as editor for book reviews in Austria. Of course, Frankl published his article in the journal of the International Society, not in the newsletter of the Göring Institute. Pytell’s suggestion that a Jewish psychiatrist, what’s more: one who visibly and publicly moved in Zionist circles (and held public lectures at the Zionist Organization) and expressed a decidedly dim view of the so-called National Socialist psychotherapy in his article, would publish it in the main organ of just that National Socialist psychotherapy movement—all the more so if one considers that Göring wanted to “cleanse” psychotherapy of Jews—is a bit surreal. In short, on one level, we are dealing here with Pytell’s mix-up of dates and institutions. It remains a mystery, though, how this confusion could occur, since both the chronology and the political background should make such a mix-up historically and politically inconceivable: it would be a historical one-timer that a Jewish psychiatrist with Zionist affiliations would even want to, let alone succeed in publishing a critique of the National Socialist abuse of psychotherapy for the purpose of indoctrination in a dedicated Nazi journal.

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Fig. 4.6 “Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie. Organ der Internationalen allgemeinen ärztlichen Gesellschaft für Psychotherapie.” In 1937, Frankl published his criticism of National Socialist psychotherapy (“Zur geistigen Problematik der Psychotherapie”) in this journal—and not, as Pytell maintains, in 1938, in the separately printed supplement of the Berlin Göring Institute

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Q: How about the content? Maybe Pytell’s critique does not just concern the place of publication—misstated by him—but also the content of Frankl’s article? A: The article published in Zentralblatt (“On the noetic problem of psychotherapy”) is substantially a clear rejection of the program of the German Psychotherapy Movement (Frankl 1937/1938). Even Pytell concedes at this instant that Frankl’s article represented “a dissociation from all that was expressly a stated goal of the Göring Institute in the formation of National Socialism” (Pytell, 2005, p. 74) and has to acknowledge that Frankl “was honorably, one might claim courageously, arguing against the misuse psychotherapy” by the National Socialists (Pytell, 2015, p. 69). I shall leave it up the reader to make sense of how an article arguing against the stated mission of the Göring Institute was, firstly, published by the Göring Institute itself and, secondly, the result, or expression, of Frankl’s attempt to establish himself within the Austrian branch of that institute, quite apart from the fact that said institute was only to commence its activities in Vienna 2 years later. In spite of all of this, Pytell writes, a few pages further into his book (without presenting any new evidence in between), that Frankl “obviously hoped to establish logotherapy and existential analysis at the Göring Institute” by means of this article (Pytell, 2005, p. 79—emphasis added by AB). The method here is the same as elsewhere in Pytell’s work: After a few pages, an allegation becomes, by means of mere repetition, a certainty, never mind the facts which clearly say something very different. In this particular case, an article that argues against the stance of the Göring Institute is construed to be the expression of Frankl’s somewhat absurd intention to establish himself at just this institute. Q: How does Pytell argue here? What is his analysis of Frankl’s article? A: Pytell correctly states that Frankl’s article rejects an “imposition of worldviews through psychology and psychotherapy.” But then he subsequently goes on to reinterpret the fact that Frankl calls for ideological restraint on the part of the therapist in the following way: To summarize, the intellectual approach of Frankl’s article was to make a tactical accomodation of Nazi psychotherapy. […] Frankl’s all for “no octroi of world-views” seemed to fit the bill (Pytell, 2005, p. 73).

This alleged “accommodation” and “fitting the bill” in this case means fitting the following bill: Göring defined the program focus of the Nationalist Socialist Psychotherapy Movement as the endeavor to “espouse psychotherapeutic medicine in the spirit of the National Socialist worldview, and to practice it” (cit. p.  69). Frankl, on the other hand, argued that psychotherapy should not and cannot propagate a specific worldview, let alone a political one. Frankl rather argued that it would be unethical to exploit the uneven authority situation within the psychotherapeutic setting by using it for political indoctrination. Against this background, it is difficult to figure out how Frankl, who unequivocally opposed the politicization of psychotherapy by the National Socialists, might have, as Pytell puts it, thereby “tactically accommodated the National Socialists.” Yet Pytell accuses Frankl of “not taking too strong a stance” because Frankl made the case for leaving ideology and politics out

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of therapy altogether, thus demanding ideological restraint from the psychotherapist: psychotherapy is not ideological instruction, but an attempt to help patients in distress. Neither approval nor rejection of the patient’s political, religious, or other ideological views come into question when the patient is seeking help for a mental disorder, quite apart from the fact that patients generally do not go into therapy to seek healing and recovery from an ideology. Regrettable as this might be at times, the political and ideological freedom of the patient must be respected, unless the patient himself brings it up as part of his problem. What’s more, we can safely assume that, under the circumstances of the time, patients adhering to Nationalist Socialism would certainly not have consulted a Jewish psychiatrist who held lectures at Zionist venues. Yet Pytell claims that Frankl, in advocating ideological restraint, somehow tactically played into the Nazis’ hands. Yet the call for ideological restraint is by no means specific to logotherapy and existential analysis: as a matter of consistency, Pytell would have to admonish psychoanalysis, behavioral therapy, and all other schools of psychotherapy in the same way. It would be a grave abuse of authority if the psychotherapist imposed specific ideologies on the patient. In fact, that is exactly what National Socialist psychotherapy sought to achieve—and what Frankl criticized: the abuse of psychotherapy as an instrument of ideological indoctrination. Q: One could argue, though, that National Socialism was an exceptional case. A: And that is indeed true. But anyone with at least a minimal insight into logotherapy knows that it endeavors to encourage the patient to come to meaningful, life-affirming and autonomous decisions concerning their view of the world and humanity, and not buy into collectivism and fanaticism (both are, according to logotherapy and existential analysis, part of the spectrum of the pathology of the Zeitgeist). However, neither is the pathology of the Zeitgeist about “political healing,” but about the re-establishment of a realistic encounter and reconciliation between the patient and the world. As already pointed out, logotherapy counts collectivisms such as National Socialism among the collective neuroses, which makes it a priori incompatible with logotherapy’s understanding of the mature person. And Frankl clearly had National Socialism—whose therapeutic program he specifically criticized—in mind when warning the therapist against an ideologically fraught therapy; after all, one should keep in mind that Frankl wrote this article at a time when ideological restraint was primarily under threat from National Socialism. Q: But Pytell indirectly reproaches Frankl for addressing the subject of psychotherapy and worldview at all. A: Yes, Pytell makes much ado about the fact that Frankl addresses a subject that was obviously highly relevant at the time: the question of the relationship between psychotherapy and worldview. Yet Pytell somehow (he does not make it explicit exactly how) infers from the fact that Frankl wrote about these topics that he wanted to gain prominence within the National Socialist Psychotherapy Movement (via, see

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above, the Göring Institute). What remains a mystery to me, however, is how this might be achieved with an article that argues against the program of National Socialist psychotherapy, as Pytell himself acknowledges. Besides, Pytell ignores two additional significant facts from Frankl’s work history: firstly, that already in his first post-psychoanalytic work (1925),9 Frankl addressed the topic of worldview and psychotherapy (as did many of Frankl’s postwar publications). Frankl did not take up this issue because the German Psychotherapy Movement also took an interest in it—moreover, from a totally different, literally opposed, perspective. Secondly, it needs to be pointed out again that Frankl resumed work on this subject in order to criticize the German psychotherapy movement. A “tactical accommodation”—especially one coming from a Viennese Jewish psychiatrist involved in the Zionist cause—would look nothing like that; Frankl could have simply kept quiet about the controversies around ideological imposition at the time and concentrated on other, less contentious issues instead. Many did choose this option and fared rather well as a result. Frankl, on the other hand, did not avoid these issues; with his article, he took a clear and unequivocal position. Q: But Pytell also alleges that Frankl later deliberately denied this article and infers that Frankl may have had something to hide here. What can you tell us about this? A: I consider this to be a further indication that Pytell’s characterization of this article is fundamentally wrong when he ominously and wrongly suggests that Frankl “hardly ever mentioned” his article later on (Pytell, 2005, p. 71). Pytell also falsely claims that this article: [...] does not appear in the bibliographies of most of his books. Where it is mentioned, this happens rather sheepishly […] (ibid.; emphasis AB).

Unfortunately, Pytell does not explain how he came up with the idea that Frankl himself mentioned his article rarely and, if at all, “sheepishly” (how does a sheepish mention in a bibliography actually look like?). First of all, the article appears in every Frankl bibliography (first put together by Frankl himself in 1963). Secondly, far from being “sheepish” about it, Frankl even elevated this very article to one of his showpieces by including it in an authoritative overview volume of his work, the anthology Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse – Texte aus fünf Jahrzehnten (Frankl, 1987), carefully compiled by himself, and again in the extended edition Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse – Texte aus sechs Jahrzehnten (Frankl, 1992)—out of no less than several hundred available essays and lectures. Strangely enough, Pytell himself lists this anthology in the bibliography of his book, so a mere cursory glance at the table of contents would have been enough for Pytell to satisfy himself that Frankl wanted to save this article from oblivion by including it in the most representative 9  In 1925, Frankl published his first post-psychoanalytical paper in the Adlerian Journal: V. E. (1925). Psychotherapie und Weltanschauung. Zur grundsätzlichen Kritik ihrer Beziehungen. Internationale Zeitschrift für Individualpsychologie III, p. 250-252.

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collection of his writings. Why? Because the subject of this article remains significant today: The practice of psychotherapy had and has nothing to do with ideological or religious or philosophical indoctrination but must be the endeavor to provide therapeutic help to people whose lives have become precarious or overshadowed by mental illness in one way or another. Q: Pytell subsequently refers to another article written by Frankl: “Seelenärztliche Selbstbesinnung,” of which he writes that it effectively seals the case for Frankl’s accommodation of National Socialism. What do you say to that? A: This article was published in the magazine Der Christliche Ständestaat [The Christian Corporatist State], edited by Husserl’s student Dietrich von Hildebrand. Before discussing Pytell’s allegation, I would like to briefly explain Dietrich von Hildebrand’s philosophical and political background, as well as that of his magazine. The magazine was one of the central mouthpieces of the Christian resistance against the Nazis and the dangers of anti-Semitism. Hildebrand, its publisher, thus described the magazine’s program in his own words: What Europe needs is not a reform of National Socialism, but its total eradication (Hildebrand, D. in Laun. A. 1992)

and Ebneth writes in a historical paper on Hildebrand’s magazine: The Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, recently escaped from the National Socialists to Austria, has published his and others’ remarkable views in the magazine Der Christliche Ständestaat. Von Hildebrand attacked National Socialism’s deeply anti-­ Christian collectivist blood-and-race doctrine in the strongest possible terms. [...] Hildebrand also criticized tendencies of Catholic anti-Judaism without mincing his words (Ebneth, 1976, p. 23ff.).

The Gedenkbuch for the victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna contains the following account of Dietrich von Hildebrand: Von Hildebrand had always been opposed to National Socialism, which is evidenced by the fact that he figured on the NS detention list during the attempted coup of 1923. After the 1933 takeover [in Germany], he emigrated to Florence in March of the same year, whence he continued to Vienna in September, taking over the management of the journal “Der Christliche Ständestaat,” which took a clear position against National Socialism and Austria’s annexation to the German Reich (Gedenkbuch Universität Wien, 2020).

Pytell does not share any of the above information with his readers; I am not even sure whether he was aware of it, for when I told him in one of our conversations in 2006, he seemed genuinely surprised. But strangely enough, he never set the record straight in the following years, but continues to stick to the unlikely narrative that Frankl’s publication in the Christliche Ständestaat was—and I now quote verbatim from Pytell’s book: yet “another step towards accommodation with National Socialist psychotherapy” (Pytell, 2005, p.  82). We thus are to believe that the Christliche Ständestaat, known as an intellectual stronghold against National Socialism, allegedly one day decided to publish a paper which basically went against everything the journal stood for. For Pytell seems to be seriously suggesting that Hildebrand and his group, whose outlet the Christliche Ständestaat was,

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promoted National Socialist psychotherapy by publishing this article (written by someone who openly affiliated himself with the Zionist movement at that) or at any rate willingly acquiesced to being misused for these purposes. But what does the article itself say? Frankl here repeats his criticism of Nationalist Socialist psychotherapy, while directly quoting Haeberlin and Gauger (prominent members of the Göring Institute Berlin) and Göring himself for the first time as representatives of what Frankl describes as an “abuse of psychotherapy,” and subjecting their work to severe criticism. Frankl’s article in the Christliche Ständestaat is an exceptionally interesting and, from a political point of view, courageous work. How Pytell came up with the idea that this article, which is expressly directed against the program of National Socialist psychotherapy, represented “a further step towards accommodation of National Socialist psychotherapy” (ibid.), has to remain a mystery—all the more so because Pytell merely makes this claim solely on the basis of the fact that Frankl cited these three Nazi psychotherapists. But Pytell fails to mention that Frankl cited them in order to offer a critique of their views and their work. To summarize: Frankl openly attacks the pioneers of the Nationalist Socialist Psychotherapy Movement in an explicitly anti-Nazi magazine. And yet, what does Pytell make of this? I quote verbatim: Although Frankl repeated his stipulation that psychotherapy should avoid imposing worldviews on patients, and seemed to suggest that the persons in question [Gauger, Haeberlin, and Göring] were inclined to do just that, he still identified with this focus on ideology and therefore accepted it (Pytell, 2005, p. 84; emphasis AB).

According to this approach, to critically deal with a topic entails “therefore accepting” it. It is not clear whether Pytell wants to suggest that von Hildebrand and his group also “therefore accepted” the Nationalist Socialist understanding of the relationship between psychotherapy and ideology, or for that matter, whether their discussion of the problems of anti-Semitism means that they “therefore accepted it.” Pytell continues: In view of the fact that this article was written on the eve of the Anschluss, one could argue that Frankl intended to establish his own version of the German Psychotherapy Movement in Austria (Pytell, 2005, p. 84).

Apart from the fact that this idea makes little sense for the reasons just given, I would like to again point out Pytell’s choice of words. At this point he still states: “one could argue that Frankl intended to establish his own version of the German Psychotherapy Movement in Austria.” Only a page later, Pytell concludes, without any additional argument given, that Frankl “clearly wanted to position himself in a leading role within the German Psychotherapy Movement.” Later still—and once more without providing additional evidence, proof or arguments—Pytell summarizes the conclusions of this chapter as follows: Frankl expressed his agreement with the psychological theory of the National Socialists and collaborated with the Vienna Göring Institute (Pytell, 2005, p. 160).

References

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The problem with this sentence is that, as we have seen, none of its allegations is correct. And what Pytell calls “agreement with the psychological theory of the National Socialists” he himself rightly called a few lines earlier: “a dissociation from all that was expressly a stated goal of the Göring Institute in the formation of National Socialism” (Pytell, 2005, p.  74), again—published in an anti-Nazi publication. However, the real insight concerning the political and historical background to this article is that Frankl published an article against the main proponents and opinions of the German Psychotherapy Movement in an important anti-Nazi magazine then still published in Austria. The facts speak for themselves. Even before the “Anschluss,” two of Frankl’s most trenchant articles from that period are remarkably clear-sighted critiques of what was going to be taught by the Göring Institute in Vienna. Moreover, this is precisely the time (1938) when he was actively involved in the Viennese chapter of the Zionist Organization, in other words: he clearly positioned himself at several levels—in terms of his political activities and in terms of his professional publications—against the National Socialists (just as he had previously opposed the anti-Semitism of the corporate state through his activities in the Vereinigung der jüdischen Ärzte). All of this should answer the question whether Frankl had the slightest intention or even interest in affiliating with a political and ideological movement whose basic premises and ideas were diametrically opposed to his own views, which at the time he had defended for more than 10 years and advocated in his previous publications. And we can safely assume that he was met with little sympathy from the opposite side: the Nazis presumably had little enthusiasm for and interest in a Jewish Zionist psychiatrist whose hitherto published works stood for everything the National Socialist psychotherapy movement wanted to “weed out.” In short: apart from criticism, Frankl had no interest in the Reich German movement; and the Nazis had—apart from revulsion and suspicion towards “Jewish Viennese psychiatry”—no interest in Frankl. To date, Pytell is alone in attempting to construe—in disregard of the facts, as well as unambiguous source material—any kind of proximity between the two.

References Abeln, R. (1970). Unbewußtes und Unterbewußtsein bei Carus und Aristoteles. Anton Hain. Adler, A. (1972). Über den nervösen Charakter. Grundzüge einer vergleichenden Individualpsychologie und Psychotherapie (1912). Fischer. Earnst, K. S., Kring, A. M., Kadar, M. A., Salem, J. E., Shepard, D. A., & Loosen, P. T. (1996). Facial expression in schizophrenia. Biological Psychiatry, 40(6), 556–558. Ebneth, R. (1976). Die österreichische Wochenschrift “Der Christliche Ständestaat”. Deutsche Emigration in Österreich 1933-1938. Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag. Ellenberger, H. (1973). Die Entdeckung des Unbewußten. Huber.

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Ertl, K. A. (2012). NS-Euthanasie in Wien. Erwin Jekelius: Der Direktor vom “Spiegelgrund” und seine Beteiligung am NS-Vernichtungsprogramm. Diplomarbeit. Universität Wien. Frankl, V. E. (1935a). Ein häufiges Phänomen bei Schizophrenie. Zeitschrift für Neurologie und Psychiatrie, 152, 161–162. Frankl, V.  E. (1935b). Kol nidre auf dem Steinhof. Mitteilungsblatt der Vereinigung jüdischer Ärzte, 22, 6–7. Frankl, V. E. (1987). Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse: Texte aus fünf Jahrzehnten. Beltz. Frankl, V. E. (1992). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press. Gedenkbuch. Gedenkbuch für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus an der Universität Wien 1938. http://gedenkbuch.univie.ac.at/. Sept 30, 2020 Göring, M. H. (1938a). Bericht. Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1938, 108. Göring, M. H. (1938b). Bericht. Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 1938, 1. Hehlmann, W. (1963). Geschichte der Psychologie. Kröner. Kring, A. M., & Earnst, K. S. (2003). Nonverbal behavior in schizophrenia. In Nonverbal behavior in clinical settings (pp. 263–286). Neugebauer, W. (1999). Wiener Psychiatrie und NS-Verbrechen. In B.  Keintzel & E.  Gabriel (Eds.), Gründe der Seele. Wiener Psychiatrie im 20. Jahrhundert. Picus. Pytell, T. (2005). Viktor Frankl – Ende eines Mythos? Studienverlag. Pytell, T. (2015). Viktor Frankl’s search for meaning: An emblematic 20th-century life (Vol. 23). Berghahn Books.

Part III

1940–1945

Chapter 5

1940–1942: At the Rothschild Hospital

Q: I suggest we move on to the next chapter. It is common knowledge that Frankl, like many of his Jewish colleagues, wanted to emigrate from Vienna, and waited for an American visa for several years. When the visa was issued, he let it expire in order to stay with his parents; he was also then working at the Rothschild Hospital, which protected him (and his immediate family) from deportation. Frankl frequently described that when he finally received his American visa, he was torn between his between staying in Vienna with his parents and leaving Austria: A: Shortly before the USA entered World War II, I received an invitation to come to the American Consulate in Vienna to pick up my immigration visa. My old parents were overjoyed because they expected that I would soon be allowed to leave Austria. I suddenly hesitated, however. The question beset me: could I really afford to leave my parents alone to face their fate, to be sent, sooner or later, to a concentration camp, or even to a so called extermination camp? Where did my responsibility lie? Should I foster my brain child, logotherapy, by emigrating to fertile soil where I could write my books? Or should I concentrate on my duties as a real child, the child of my parents who had to do whatever he could to protect them? I pondered the problem this way and that but could not arrive at a solution; this was the type of dilemma that made one wish for “a hint from Heaven,” as the phrase goes. It was then that I noticed a piece of marble lying on a table at home. When I asked my father about it, he explained that he had found it on the site where the National Socialists had burned down the largest Viennese synagogue. He had taken the piece home because it was part of the tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. One gilded Hebrew letter was engraved on the piece; my father explained that this letter stood for one of the Commandments. Eagerly I asked, “Which one is it?” He answered, “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.” At that moment I decided to stay upon the land, and to let the American visa lapse. (Frankl, 1997).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Batthyány, Viktor Frankl and the Shoah, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83063-2_5

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Q: Pytell, however, offers a radically different alternative account why Frankl stayed in Vienna: Not to protect his parents, but because he “dreamt of being deported.” Could you comment? A: Pytell writes that Frankl let his American visa expire and remained in Vienna because “[his] therapeutic techniques of paradoxical intention, his emphasis on attitudinal values and the psychology of worldviews convinced him that the concentration camp should be his sphere of activity” (Pytell, 2005, p.  97). Hence he is basically suggesting that Frankl remained in Vienna in order to finally fulfill his vocation and practice paradoxical intention and attitudinal values in the concentration camp. Pytell also implies that Frankl willingly accepted the deportation of his parents in order to do psychotherapy in the concentration camp and quickly dismisses Frankl’s biographical account that he let his American visa lapse after his father showed him the salvaged fragment of the Ten Commandments from a synagogue destroyed by the National Socialists, commenting that this was merely a “allegedly mystical sign” (Pytell, 2015, p. 87). Q: It is well known that Frankl was opposed to euthanasia throughout his life and that he saved mentally ill Jewish patients from euthanasia, first single-handedly and then with Otto Pötzl, by issuing inaccurate diagnoses and housing mentally ill patients in the Jewish retirement home instead of the psychiatric clinic, from where they would have been deported and murdered under the pretext of the Nazi euthanasia program T 4. Pytell seems to doubt this. He writes that Frankl first mentioned this “sabotage” of the euthanasia program only in the late sixties, a few years after Pötzl’s death in 1962 (Pytell, 2005, p. 99). Does Pytell dispute that Frankl and Pötzl issued false diagnoses in order to protect Jewish patients from euthanasia? A: In the German edition of his book, Pytell claims that Frankl waited until Pötzl’s death in 1962 (Pytell, 2005, p.  99) and that, in short, this constituted a belated attempt on Frankl’s part to rehabilitate Pötzl and “strike a heroic pose” for himself. Had Pytell consulted the Archives, however, he would have found a number of documents from 1945 pertaining to Frankl and Pötzl (and colleagues) sabotaging Hitler’s euthanasia program, such as this item from the Archives (accessible through its online search machine): Number: 12704 Type: correspondence II Description I: exchange of letters Description II: 3 letters Description III: 6 sheets Person 1: V. E. Frankl Person 2: Mayor of Vienna Frankl date: 21.08.1945 Note/content: Frankl confirms that Prof. Otto Pötzl saved the lives of mentally ill Jews by issuing false diagnoses (see Fig. 5.1) Pytell could have easily convinced himself at first hand that Frankl did not “claim” only from 1962 onwards that he, or he and Pötzl, sabotaged the National Socialist

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Fig. 5.1  Timothy Pytell maintains that Frankl only referred after Pötzl’s death (1962) to their joint efforts to sabotage the euthanasia program. As corroborated inter alia by this document of 1 October, 1945, this assertion is equally false. (The confirmation is written on the letterhead of the preceding tenant of the apartment Frankl moved into in 1945, at Mariannengasse 1). (© Viktor Frankl Archive, Vienna)

euthanasia program by issuing inaccurate diagnoses and transferring patients to the Jewish retirement home in Vienna’s Malzgasse. Some copies of Frankl’s testimonies in that regard are available at the Frankl Archives and the Archives of the Vienna City Hall. They were written immediately after his return to Vienna in 1945 and we have additional confirmation in Frankl’s records, dating from 1946, 1948, 1949, and 1951 (and later years, too, of course). Furthermore, there is a correspondence (1945–1947) with former colleagues in which Frankl refers to attempts made by him and Pötzl to sabotage the euthanasia program and discusses the erstwhile initiative with them. Some of these letters have since been published in several anthologies, for example in Volume 1 of the edition of Viktor Frankl’s collected works (Frankl, 2005b).

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Strangely enough—Pytell corrected his false claim (though he never mentioned that there was something to correct in any of his German publications, thus leaving his German readers misinformed by his false claim that Frankl only talked about the sabotage after 1962), and briefly mentioned in the English version of his book that Frankl gave a deposition and described their sabotaging of euthanasia already in 1945 (after I informed Pytell about this; Pytell, 2015). But on page 140 of the same book, Pytell again claims—against his better knowledge, against what the sources tell us, and against his own assertions only a few pages earlier, that “Frankl did not give testimony in the postwar euthanasia trials, especially since he claimed to ‘sabotage’ these practices” (Pytell, 2015, p. 140). And 2 years later, Pytell again prefers not to accept that Frankl and Pötzl attempted to sabotage the euthanasia program: In 2017, Pytell published in the online portal of the American journal Psychology Today, and additionally sets about to make the yet another false claim: In the summer of 1997 was also the first time I was able to meet the director of the archive Wolfgang Neugebauer. Wolfgang was an old friend of my mentor Andy Rabinbach and I introduced myself as Andy’s student. I was very excited because Wolfgang was also the leading expert on euthanasia in Austria and I wanted his opinion on Frankl’s claim he and Otto Poetzl had sabotaged euthanasia efforts. The interview was short, but I had one straightforward, but rather accusatory question I wanted answered. I asked “Frankl claims he and Poetzl sabotaged euthanasia which means he knew who was asking for patients and the circumstances of the request and therefore had pertinent information. Why did not he give testimony in the “people’s trials” after the war? That makes him morally culpable, no?” I still recall looking into Wolfgang’s steely blue gray eyes as he calmly sat behind his desk in the back of the archive. His answer was short, “Frankl did not sabotage any euthanasia.” The interview ended shortly after that, but I left wondering if Frankl had not sabotaged euthanasia – why did he say he did? (Pytell, 2017).

Pytell thus claims that one of the leading experts on the National Socialist euthanasia program in Austria opined that Frankl falsely claimed to have sabotaged euthanasia. Upon reading this, I wrote to Professor Neugebauer for clarification. Given Pytell’s record of misrepresentations, I asked Neugebauer whether this conversation actually took place as described and—more importantly—whether he had in fact taken or still takes such a stance (and whether Pytell’s quote actually reflected Neugebauer’s opinion). Neugebauer’s reply was not long in coming—and neither was it particularly surprising given Pytell’s track record so far: I never said the sentence “Frankl did not sabotage any euthanasia” that Pytell attributes to me. In all my publications on the resistance and NS euthanasia, I mentioned Viktor Frankl’s resistance activities, carried out in collaboration with Prof. Pötzl and Franziska Löw, social worker for the Jewish Community in Vienna. Timothy Pytell did not conduct an interview (with structured questions and an authorized text) with me, but we had a rather short conversation. I noticed immediately that he harbored a deep-seated prejudice against Frankl. (Neugebauer, W. personal communication; email March 30, 2020).

Hence this is yet another case in which one of Pytell’s claims turns out to be false upon further probing. It might be an intentional misrepresentation, or it might be an unintentional misrepresentation; but either way, the alleged “interview” with

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Neugebauer was in fact merely a “rather short conversation”; additionally, the exact opposite of what Pytell claims to have been said by Wolfgang Neugebauer was actually said by him. And regarding Frankl’s sabotage of the euthanasia program, there are also further independent witnesses, such as Franziska Danneberg-Löw, who, as a resistance fighter and in her role of social worker for the Jewish community, took selfless care of Jewish foster children. Vienna University has published a very interesting research paper on the subject of her beneficial work: in Franzi Löw – eine jüdische Fürsorgerin im nationalsozialistischen Wien unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der NS-Zeit (2012), Beatrix Steinhardt reports that Frankl saved mentally handicapped children in Löw’s care from transportation (and thus euthanasia) by admitting them to and hiding them in the Rothschild Hospital.1 This was not hitherto commonly known within Frankl research; it is, however, further corroboration, independent from our archive and the immediate circle around Pötzl and Frankl, of Frankl’s erstwhile efforts to undermine (and help others to undermine) the Nazis’ euthanasia program at some considerable personal risk. In brief, this claim of Pytell is false, too, and the account of his “interview” with Wolfgang Neugebauer is severely misleading. Q: We will now come to what must be Pytell’s most serious allegation: Pytell alleges that Frankl conducted “medical experiments” on Jewish patients at the Rothschild Hospital. A: Let us start with some background facts: The Rothschild Hospital was one of the last clinics in Austria to treat Jewish patients at all. Frankl worked there as head of the neurological department, having been forced, after Austria’s “Anschluss,” to close the private practice he had only just opened in Vienna-Alsergrund. The hospital had a large emergency department—a result of the continuous assaults perpetrated against the remaining Jews in Vienna. Particularly from the early 1940s, the number of patients delivered at the hospital’s emergency department after suicide attempts increased sharply. It so happens that patients who are committed to a hospital after a suicide attempt often chose methods (overdoses of narcotics, head shots, etc.) that necessitate neurological treatment. Since these patients were brought to the hospital, Frankl obviously treated them—after all, he worked there as a medical doctor at the neurological department. But as we will shortly see, this alone is reason enough for Pytell to criticize Frankl in the strongest of terms. Moreover, Frankl, as head of the neurology department, had developed a method to treat patients suffering from barbiturate poisoning that had transferred to his department by the hospital staff in the emergency room. This, in short, consisted in intracisternal amphetamine injections on patients with respiratory arrest in order to alleviate the typical symptoms of lethal barbiturate poisoning, i.e. hypoventilation, apnea and, finally, suffocation. Q: Pytell writes that these patients had already been dead (Pytell, 2005, p. 102). 1  See the interview file: Danneberg-Löw, F. (1988). Erzählte Geschichte, Gespräch Nr 515. Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstands, Wien.

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A: As we know, Frankl’s efforts have indeed saved several people’s lives—but of course they had not actually been dead. Frankl was a doctor, not a miracle worker. In fact, these patients were transferred from the emergency room to the neurology department of the hospital by the medical staff, because in the emergency room, they had neither the time, nor the resources, nor the expertise to treat these patients after they provided initial first aid. Not giving them further treatment would have meant certain death for them. Indeed, all of this should be understood against the backdrop of the circumstances then prevailing at the Rothschild Hospital; we should try to imagine the situation at the hospital at the time. Q: Maybe you can say something about the situation of the hospital? A: The Rothschild Hospital was opened in 1873, initially planned for 100 beds as part of the wider healthcare infrastructure of the Vienna Israelite Community. In 1938, a decree was issued, effective throughout the Reich, stipulating that Jews could henceforth only be medically treated in Jewish institutions—whereupon the entire healthcare provision for the Jewish population of Vienna and its environs fell to the Rothschild Hospital. The report of the Austrian Historical Commission (Jensen, 2002) states that conditions from then on were “catastrophic,” because the building was obviously overcrowded under the circumstances, and the medical staff overworked. The precise number of patients at the Rothschild Hospital at the time is unknown, but a later protocol, quoted by the Historical Commission, states that more than 1400 inpatients were deported when the hospital was finally closed down; and that’s not even counting outpatients (ibid.). This gives us at least some idea of the conditions prevalent at the 100-bed Rothschild Hospital at the time. One can easily imagine the enormous pressure the doctors of the emergency ward were under; hence if possible and necessary, patients were transferred to other departments for further treatment. And since Frankl had developed the above-­ mentioned method of bypassing the blood–brain barrier through a surgical intervention while administering antidotes directly to their site of action in the affected brain areas, he was all the less prepared to leave these patients to their fate. The treatment worked, and probably assisted by a former colleague at Steinhof, Frankl also published an article on this method. This was his last publication before his deportation to Theresienstadt. Under the prevalent political circumstances, a Jew could obviously not publish in Austria or Germany, so the article was published in a Swiss medical journal in September 1942. Pytell unceremoniously turns this into a “collaboration with the Nazis.” Q: What do you say to this allegation? A: As we have seen before, his approach is quite methodical, if a bit biased: Pytell uses insinuations and assumptions that somehow or other solidify into “facts” within a few pages by the virtue of mere repetition. I therefore want to try trace the structure of his reasoning. Pytell initially asserts that the standards of the Viennese school of medicine were “highly questionable” in the interwar period, i.e. even before the “Anschluss” (Pytell, 2005, p. 101)—which, by today’s standards, is undoubtedly true, though it is not quite sure whether the Viennese pre-“Anschluss” school of medicine really

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deserves to be singled out as particularly questionable in comparison to, for example, the rest of Europe or, for that matter, the USA.  And as examples for these “highly questionable standards” Pytell cites the introduction of shock treatments and, strangely enough, the pharmacological treatment of psychoses. His overall summary of the Viennese school of medicine is this: “in short: the medical practice of Viennese physicians in the interwar period was characterized by experimental and often violent practices” (Pytell, 2005, p.  101). This keyword is enough for Pytell to henceforth consistently talk of Frankl’s rescue attempts as “experimental research.” Furthermore, Pytell is of the opinion that Frankl was not authorized to attempt the rescue of patients that were admitted to the emergency ward of the Rothschild Hospital (Pytell, 2005, p. 106f.) and that the interventions performed by Frankl in his rescue attempts were insufficiently proven, deploring the fact that no extensive test series with animal experiments had preceded them (Pytell, 2005, p. 104). Given the medical standards, and especially the concrete circumstances at the Rothschild Hospital at the time, this amounts to the assertion that this group of patients should not have been treated at all. Furthermore, Pytell is seemingly unaware of the fact that the current system of pilot trial and clinical trial phases I–IV for medical interventions was introduced only several decades later. And Pytell opines indeed that the fact that Frankl was prepared to treat Jewish suicide patients at the emergency ward, or at his department, at all was morally wrong and boiled down to “collaboration with the National Socialists” (Pytell, 2005, p. 107). In a fourth step, Pytell brings together these assumptions and thus arrives at the conclusion that Frankl conducted experimental medical research on Jews on behalf, or at least with the tacit approval, of the Nazis (Pytell, 2005, p. 109). Since the first two propositions are not as much a critique of Frankl as they are of Viennese medicine at that time in general, I will primarily discuss the third and fourth ones, the more so as Pytell primarily builds his argument on them. Pytell openly maintains in this context that it was wrong to save the Jewish suicide patients’ lives. I only mention in passing the fact that he, in so doing, accuses the entire Rothschild Hospital, which was, after all, run by the Vienna Israelite Community. After all, these patients were initially treated in the emergency room. We do not know how many of these patients were successfully treated in the emergency room, and how many were rescued without necessitating referral to the neurology department—only when these attempts in the emergency room were in vain, were they transferred to the neurological department. However, Frankl, and his endeavors to save these patients, are at the center of Pytell’s criticism. Q: Why? As a physician at the hospital, was not Frankl obligated to provide medical assistance to them? A: That is the question I also asked Pytell, but he answered with the same argument he uses in his book: namely that he, guided by his “strong American individualism” (Pytell, 2005, p.  165) is of the opinion that a person’s suicidal intent must be respected unconditionally. This opinion is of course in principle an entirely legitimate philosophical standpoint; although one might expect that—if one uses one’s

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own philosophical position as the basis of criticism of another person’s decision, one would at least also support one's own position with arguments and not simply state that one disagrees with the other position and that the latter is therefore wrong. Otherwise the discourse becomes a bit shallow and superficial or is actually no discourse at all. Beyond that, however, Pytell maintains that Jewish suicide could sometimes also be seen as a form of “political resistance in a broad sense” (Pytell, 2005, p. 107). To that end, he refers to an article by the Holocaust researcher Kwiet (1984)—and this article remains, for many pages, Pytell’s sole source for the assertion that suicide acquired, or at least could acquire, “a political dimension under these circumstances” and that Frankl “therefore [sic! – AB] undermined Jewish resistance against the Nazis.” Pytell invokes Kwiet but does not mention the fact that Kwiet himself acknowledges that suicide is a highly complex and multicausal event. Kwiet therefore treats the hypothesis that the suicides among the Jewish population were political acts of resistance with a lot more restraint and caution than Pytell implies. Kwiet thus writes: What I, as a layman in this field, have been able to gather from the immense and controversial literature on the subject suggests that there is no single causal explanation of suicide, but rather a complex web of many related factors (Kwiet, 1984, p. 137).

Kwiet notes, however, that suicide, as “unanticipated” behavior, in any case disturbed the orderly flow of everyday life envisaged by the Nazi rulers. And yet, as Kwiet himself points out, even then the actual picture is much more complex—not only with regard to the motives for suicide among Jews in the Third Reich, but also with regard to the question of whether or not the Nazis actually interpreted Jewish suicides merely as disruptive elements of the smoothly ordered everyday life of social life. For on the other hand, the National Socialists encouraged Jewish suicides,—at any rate, they did so immediately after the “Anschluss,” at least until the large-scale deportations began. Thus, Goeschel in his standard reference work on Suicide in Nazi Germany reports: After a Jewish shopkeeper had committed suicide together with his family in Vienna, storm troopers plastered his shop windows with placards saying: ‚Please imitate‘. (Goeschel, 2015, p. 99)

And when Anna Freud asked her father, Sigmund Freud, immediately after the “Anschluss,” whether it would not be a good option to commit suicide, Freud is said to have responded: “Why? Because they would like us to?”, and there are several reasons why Freud would be in a better position to bear witness on the problem of suicide during these years than Pytell. Goeschel, in his comprehensive treatise on suicide in Nazi Germany, briefly discusses Kwiet, but finds that in the vast majority of cases, suicide among Jews was attempted out of resignation rather than out of protest; indeed, Goeschel asks “if at all, Jewish suicide was a form of resistance towards Nazism, or how far, on the other hand, it was an act of despair and hopelessness” (Goeschel, 2015, p. 97), only to present much evidence in support of the latter and nearly none in support of the former. Furthermore, Rosenkranz points out that most Jewish suicides in the Third Reich “were carried out quietly and inconspicuously” (Rosenkranz, 1978, p. 40) which

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largely indicates the phenomenology of suicide stemming from desperation, as opposed to suicide as an expression of active protest or resistance. A protest or politically motivated suicide is usually not carried out quietly; quite on the contrary. The Berlin Jewish physician Herta Northoff relates “daily” suicides of Jewish men and women, who were forced to separate from their “Aryan” partners against the backdrop of the prohibition on “mixed race relationships” (Goeschel, 2015, p. 99); they clearly did not attempt to commit suicide as an act of protest against the Nazis, but out of sheer desperation. More importantly: To come back to the Rothschild Hospital and Frankl’s specific role in caring for his patients, there exists a lengthy testimony in the archives of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Vienna—as far as is known the only testimony of its kind—of Elsa Geldner (née Lindner) who was one of the patients who tried to commit suicide (with medication overdose) and was subsequently treated in the hospital emergency room and then brought to and rescued at Frankl’s neurology department of the Rothschild Hospital. Geldner tells the story of an (unnamed) young doctor at the Neurology Department who “eagerly tried everything he could to save my life,” and—in contrast to Pytell—she also tells the longer and complete story of what happened after she was rescued. Contrary to Pytell’s narrative, the staff of Frankl’s neurology department kept this patient much longer than medically necessary in order to protect her from deportation. Geldner would have been able to leave within a week or so, but was actually given a series of false diagnoses and thus could stay in Neurology Department of the Hospital from March 7 (the date of her admission) to September 18, 1942, i.e. more than 6 months, in order to help her avoid being deported to Auschwitz. And when the Rothschild Hospital was finally taken over by the SS in late 1942, the same staff helped her flee and go into hiding. This, then, is what the only remaining testimony of one of these suicide patients at Frankl’s neurology department says, and it tells a very different story than Pytell’s (and note that Pytell does not provide any direct sources or evidence for his allegations). Hence from what we know, patients were not, as Pytell implies, admitted to the hospital only in order to being rescued and subsequently deported; rather, they were given false diagnoses so that they “had” to stay in the hospital and could not be deported— which is difficult to reconcile with Pytell’s allegation that Frankl or his department staff were collaborating with the Nazis by treating and rescuing suicidal patients. An accompanying letter to this testimony, written by the nephew of Elsa Geldner, additionally points out that suicide attempts were occasionally attempted by Viennese Jews in order to be admitted to the Rothschild Hospital and thus gain protection from being deported—yet another piece of the story which does not fit with Pytell’s narrative. At any rate, it would be outside the scope of this discussion to unfold the complex web of causal, motivational and possibly social or political factors that ultimately lead to suicide or suicide attempts. I do note, however, that the complexity of this question, not to mention the possible social and political dimensions of this question, is discussed in a disappointingly superficial way by Pytell—for the most part he only refers to his (and, for that matter, misleadingly simplistic) reading of Kwiet’s paper and no further sources (let alone archival material); hardly any other

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sources are cited, or even mentioned in passing. Yet a strong claim would need strong evidence—and Pytell’s claim is strong indeed, for he asserts that Frankl, since he tried to rescue the patients admitted to the emergency ward, was “breaking the Jewish resistance in the form of suicide.” (Pytell, 2005, p. 106f.). Only a few pages further on—we already know this method—“these acts verged on collaboration” (ibid.). And a little later still: Frankl was therefore prepared to work with the Nazi regime [… for] he broke the resistance (in the form of suicide) against the National Socialists (Pytell, 2005, p. 109).

Pytell thereby ignores two facts: First, for all we know, there were multiple motives at the root of these suicides, and whether any of them were meant to be an act of resistance is not at all certain. What seems much more important, however, is this: the fact that patients were admitted to the Rothschild Hospital’s emergency ward after suicide attempts at all indicates that the Jewish Hospital did generally treat suicide patients. Is Pytell trying to suggest, then, that the medical staff of the Rothschild Hospital—the hospital of the Israelite Community—tried to break the Jewish resistance? Pytell does not further address this question, but he approvingly mentions the counterexample of a group of Berlin doctors, who debated making large doses of sleeping pills available to Jewish patients with a view to facilitating their suicide. Although I think that Pytell’s discussion of this topic is particularly superficial, I want to point out a difference that is relevant both from a medical and ethical point of view: Some Berlin doctors discussed (and no more than that) the question whether it would be legitimate to provide barbiturates such as Veronal to patients who, given the political situation, did not see any other solution apart from suicide (and there is no mention of resistance here either). However, the situation at the emergency room of the Rothschild Hospital was fundamentally different: Apart from the numerous victims of Nazi aggression, the staff at the emergency ward also had to deal with unconscious or comatose, and therefore unresponsive patients, who obviously had to be treated, all the more so since there was no way of knowing why the patients had symptoms of intoxication to start with. It would be presumptuous if Pytell were to claim, especially as a non-­psychiatrist, to know the percentage of politically motivated suicide attempts among those admitted to the emergency ward at the time (assuming that they constituted a significant proportion of the admitted patients, or existed at all, see above). And it is even more presumptuous when he implicitly arrogates what he sees as the correct alternative— that Frankl and the hospital staff should have let these patients die on the off chance, as it were, that an unknown percentage possibly defined their suicide attempt as political resistance—assuming that there were such cases at all and that such cases were taken to hospital by family or friends in the first place. For these unresponsive patients were obviously not in a position to provide any information regarding the motives of their suicide; they were not even able to inform their doctors whether they accidently or intentionally overdosed on the widely prescribed Veronal. Generally speaking, however, what if we take Pytell’s

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argument seriously and transfer it to the present: were we to evaluate certain suicide attempts differently on a simple hunch, and therefore to treat the patients selectively based on intuitive gut feelings, where should we draw the line? Next to the fact that the physician who is confronted with a case of medication overdose has no way of establishing the cause (such as error, forgetfulness, misunderstanding of medical instructions) or reason (suicidal intention) of the overdose, speculating about, and then weighing and judging these suspected motives leads us to a myriad of ethical problems (i.e. the problem of Gesinnungsmedizin). If a politically motivated suicide should be respected even if brought to the hospital, the question immediately arises, how physicians who disagree with the political motives in question should act? In the case of National Socialism, the question can be answered quite easily, but how about less clear-cut cases? This position seems to lead to dangerous, arbitrary, and ideological ethics of assistance of the kind we hope to have overcome in the twenty-first century, i.e. conditional medical treatment as a function of the political persuasions and attitudes of patient and doctor. With his position, Pytell thus introduces political debates to a field whose task should be the treatment of patients, irrespective of age, gender, social background, political stance or religious belief. And the question remains: if the suicidal patient is selectively treated according to motive, why should only political motives count (and which ones)? Why not also heartbreak, or financial problems, and why indeed not anything? The question obviously becomes all the more contentious when we are talking about the suicidal intent of the mentally ill: for Pytell leaves us in the dark as to whether he thinks that Frankl or the medical staff of the Rothschild Hospital should have also refused treatment of other, i.e. psychotic suicidal patients, and left them to die. Additionally, research shows that accidental overdosage, particularly among confused or cognitively impaired patients and those suffering from mental disorders, is quite common, especially when it comes to sleep medication such as Veronal.2 And since, owing to their intoxication, these patients were unable to provide any details regarding the course of their poisoning, the medical question arises as to how, and according to which criteria, Pytell would have preferred the Rothschild Hospital to treat patients selectively, or to leave them to die unattended. In any case, there are complex ethical issues which would deserve a far more nuanced and careful debate—none of which Pytell even hints at, unfortunately. What is more, one must keep in mind, particularly in the context of Frankl’s supposed collaboration with the Nazis alleged by Pytell, that the (active, or only passively tolerated) killing of “unworthy life”—and, according to National Socialist doctrine, that included the mentally ill, i.e. the patient group with by far the highest 2  For studies and further information on the problem of differentiating intentional and unintentional overdoses, see: Johnson, E. M., Lanier, W. A., Merrill, R. M., Crook, J., Porucznik, C. A., Rolfs, R. T., & Sauer, B. (2013). Unintentional Prescription opioid-related Overdose Deaths: Description of Decedents by next of kin or best contact, Utah, 2008–2009. Journal of General Internal Medicine 28(4), p. 522-529; Paulozzi, L. J. (2012). Prescription drug overdoses: a review. Journal of Safety Research 43(4), p. 283-289.

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suicide rate—was obviously much more compatible with the aims of the Nazis than saving the lives of Jewish patients—after all, the above-mentioned case of the SS encouraging other Jewish citizens to “please imitate” a Jewish suicide is well documented. Q: Pytell also alleges that Frankl was not qualified at the time to perform these operations, since he did not have any specialist training in neurosurgery. A: Neurosurgical specialist training was not introduced in Vienna (and the whole of Austria) until decades later (as was the separation of the discipline of neurosurgery from neurology and surgery in general).3 Frankl could not acquire such a specialist qualification because it did not yet exist. Such training was, at that time, much more informal and largely depended on whether one’s teachers and mentors were active in the field of neurosurgery. And indeed, Frankl had learned and worked under the supervision of Otto Pötzl in the years before and Pötzl was widely known and respected as one of the pioneers of Viennese psychosurgery, i.e. the neurosurgical therapy of severe mental disorders (Hoff, 1952, 971f.). Furthermore, we know that the clinical director of the Rothschild Hospital, Dr. Reich, called Frankl to the hospital outside the latter’s regular on-call shifts, for him to treat patients with barbiturate poisoning (Frankl, 1995, p. 58), suggesting that he supported and encouraged Frankl’s rescue attempts. Had Frankl not been professionally qualified, the clinical director of the hospital would hardly have encouraged, or asked for them. Hence certainly among most of the medical superintendents of the Israelite Community’s hospital, Frankl’s intervention to treat severe barbiturate poisoning was supported and even requested. Secondly, he had developed a successful intervention to treat these very patients (which was, incidentally, taken up by other researchers in the 1950s, see, for example, zur Verth [1951] and Dönhardt [1959]). Pytell also claims, by the way—without citing sources (there are none)—that Frankl portrayed his work at the Rothschild Hospital “as heroic resistance against the Nazis” (Pytell, 2005, p. 108) and that this narrative was “devoid of any foundation” (ibid.). However, this is yet another false claim, for Frankl never construed his medical work in a political light—the politicization of suicide is, I repeat, a historical position that Pytell has adopted from his own minimalist reading of Kwiet’s work. Frankl never shared this view. On the contrary, Frankl merely saw it as his responsibility as a doctor to treat the patients who were sent to his hospital department; otherwise, why would the ER send them there?. This applied to Frankl and applies to most physicians in the civilized world. And as to the idea that Frankl’s “resistance” being “devoid of any foundation”: We do know from other sources (cf. Elsa Geldner’s and Franziska Danneberg-Löw’s 3  For a discussion specifically dealing with the history of neurosurgery in Vienna, see: Diemath, H.E. (2014). 50 Jahre Neurochirurgische Universitätsklinik Wien. Neurochirurgische Erinnerungen  – Von der Nachkriegszeit zur Erfolgsgeschichte. Journal für Neurologie, Neurochirurgie und Psychiatrie 15:4; Krüger, J. (2005). Zur Geschichte der Neurochirurgie. Nervenheilkunde 24:09, p. 837-846.

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testimonies) that Frankl did indeed take considerable personal risk by keeping patients on his ward under the pretext of false diagnoses, or hid children in his department, in order to protect them from being deported. Given that the SS regularly raided the Rothschild Hospital, this was no doubt a risky endeavor. Interestingly enough, Pytell views the issuing of false diagnoses in order to protect patients at the Rothschildspital as “resistance” (Pytell, 2015, p. 99)—but only as long, it seems, as other doctors (i.e. everybody but Frankl) at the Rothschildspital did issue them. For at the same time—despite the fact Frankl himself also issued false diagnoses for the exact same reason (i.e. with Pötzl, and later in, for example, the case of Elsa Geldner) and additionally hid children on his department to protect them from deportation— Pytell proclaims that Frankl “never engaged in active resistance” (Pytell, 2015, p. 96). Frankl did, however, frequently talk about his attempts to sabotage the ‘euthanasia’ program of the Nazis with false medical diagnoses. Pytell may hold that this, too, was “devoid of any foundation” (Pytell, 2005, p. 108), or that Frankl only “proclaimed” (Pytell, 2015, p. 88) these attempts, but as we saw, much of his skepticism about these sabotage attempts is built upon a frankly astonishing ignorance of the historical and archival sources (cf. Franziska Danneberg-Löw’s or Elsa Geldner’s testimony), and his false presentation of what Wolfgang Neugebauer allegedly (but had, in fact, not) told Pytell in an interview which according to Wolfgang Neugebauer actually never took place in the way Pytell describes it. Pytell concludes this chapter with the following summary: To summarize, one can say that  – when he quoted the leading Nazi psychotherapists of 1937 and 1938 and later undertook research at a hospital under Nazi administration – Frankl tried his best to make concessions to the regime. But this was not decisive, because, just as his article on the experiments appeared in September 1942, he was deported to Theresienstadt. The attempt to accommodate the Nazis had failed miserably and the “mandarin” [i.e. Frankl – AB] could only stumble along in gloom (Pytell, 2005, p. 110).

Leaving aside his not particularly subtle mockery of Frankl’s deportation—let us take a detailed look at this “summary”: To summarize, one can say that  – when he quoted the leading Nazi psychotherapists of 1937 and 1938...

I have already referred to this earlier on—Pytell here omits the crucial fact that Frankl quoted Gauger, Haeberlin, and Göring in Hildebrand’s anti-Nazi journal in order to sharply criticize these leading Nazi psychotherapists. ...and later undertook research at a hospital under Nazi administration...

This is yet another misrepresentation; the final report of the Historical Commission documents that the Rothschild Hospital was the last hospital in Vienna to be managed by the Israelite Community. The SS carried out regular raids there. It is not clear whether Pytell means that these raids constituted Nazi administration, but all available sources, including the testimony of Elsa Geldner (the rescued patient whose report is the only testimony found so far in the archives) and the final report of the Historical Commission suggest otherwise.

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5  1940–1942: At the Rothschild Hospital ...[that] Frankl tried his best to make concessions to the regime. But this was not decisive, because, just as his article on the experiments appeared in September 1942, he was deported to Theresienstadt.

We have already discussed this—but Pytell resorts to a linguistic trick here: according to Pytell, Viennese medicine was altogether “highly questionable,” “aggressive,” and “experimental.” Frankl was a physician in Vienna; therefore, his medical work was also “experimental”; furthermore, Pytell adheres to his own and rather incomplete reading of Kwiet’s suggestion that perhaps some suicide attempts within the Jewish population were intended as “resistance in a broad sense.” Therefore, according to Pytell, the staff of the Rothschild Hospital broke the Jewish resistance because it treated suicides admitted to the emergency ward. And because this alleged resistance would have been directed at the Nazis, Pytell describes the care given to these patients as collaboration with the Nazis. This does not constitute a logical argument, but a sequence of linguistic distortions and Pytell’s historically, politically, and medically disputable assumptions. One wonders, though, how Pytell would argue had Frankl not treated Jewish patients under the care of the Rothschild Hospital. Q: In his discussion of these rescue attempts, Pytell refers to an interview with Tom Corrigan in 1981. In his 2005 publication, Pytell claims that this was the first time that Frankl openly talked about his rescue attempts, and that he asked Corrigan to keep secrecy about this. Was that really the first time Frankl related these facts? A: As we will see in a moment, this is again is a misrepresentation of the actual facts, and Pytell has corrected this in his 2015 book (after I showed him references, some as early as 1947 [Pytell, 2015, p. 91]). First to Corrigan: Tom Corrigan, a film producer, wanted to make a film about Frankl; to this end, he interviewed him at length and discussed the script with him. The conversation took place in 1981 and was taped. Pytell has the following to say about it: Did Frankl have something to hide? That’s the way it looked – for when he started talking about the experiments, he said, by way of introduction, that these details from his life were “known to hardly anyone.” He also told Corrigan that these details were intended only for him and Fabry and were “not to be used without my express consent.” He added that these details “could not be of any use… but might be interesting” (Pytell, 2005, p. 164).

This does indeed sound rather conspirative, although it would not perhaps make much sense in any case to discuss biographical details that one wants to keep hidden and private for whatever reasons in a taped conversation with a filmmaker one just met for the first time in one’s life. Q:What is the content of the conversation? Does Frankl in fact swear Corrigan to secrecy? A: Frankl says several times that many details of the interview would be of no use for the film. He furthermore says that the interview should not be used without his or Joseph Fabry’s (director of the US Institute of Logotherapy, also present during the interview) explicit consent. Pytell makes this sound, however, as if this referred expressly to his rescue attempts at the Rothschild Hospital. But none of this is

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true—on the contrary, Frankl describes, immediately after his request to confer with him or Fabry before further use of the interview, how he, after 1938, notwithstanding his exclusion from the Austrian Alpine Association for “racial reasons,” removed the yellow star in order to go climbing with a close friend, the resistance fighter Hubert Gsur, one last time before deportation (and shortly before Gsur was sentenced to death for being active in the resistance movement). Frankl literally kissed the rock for the sheer joy of climbing the mountain once more. If we follow Pytell’s argument, then that’s what Frankl “obviously wanted to conceal.” Frankl also asked Corrigan for restraint when he related how he met, and fell in love with, his first wife, Tilly. He only referred to the time at the Rothschild Hospital, and his attempts to rescue suicides, later on. As I said before, the interview was intended to collect material for a biographical film about Frankl—with Frankl himself as source—not the best moment by any stretch of imagination to divulge information one wants to keep secret anyway. Q: The more general question remains whether Frankl otherwise saw a reason to conceal his rescue attempts at the Rothschild Hospital, and generally preferred not to talk about them. Is this true? A: Certainly not. That is not what dissimulation looks like, especially in view of the fact that Frankl publicly referred to the rescue attempts much earlier (and not, as Pytell falsely writes, in 1981)—the first time, to my knowledge, after his release from the concentration camp, before the Austrian Neurological Society, in Vienna4—1947 (and, before that, in a 1946 letter to Oswald Schwarz, who was in exile in London [Frankl 2005b, p. 125]). After that, he spoke of this again and again in his biographical sketches—these lectures were often recorded and some of them are on sale. Had Frankl had any reason at all to keep his rescue attempts secret, he certainly wouldn’t have referred to them before a well-versed audience at the Austrian Neurological Society in 1947, or mentioned them in his numerous other biographical lectures, as well as in a recorded interview with a filmmaker (Corrigan), or brought it up later, in his autobiography. Surprisingly, Pytell himself quotes a 1972 lecture in San Diego, where Frankl spoke about his rescue attempts at the Rothschild Hospital (Pytell, 2005, p. 106) before a large audience of several hundred students, faculty members and the public. Even within Pytell’s own narrative, it is therefore difficult to understand why Pytell would suggest that Frankl requested secrecy from Corrigan in 1981; after all, there was nothing left to keep secret, since documentation shows that Frankl publicly talked about his clinical work at the Rothschild Hospital as early as 1947 and also in his public lectures in the States. Pytell nonetheless criticizes (2015, p. 91) the fact that Frankl does not discuss it in a biographical essay published in 1973—but Pytell prudently omits to mention that this biography is indeed an extremely brief sketch, less than seven pages long, which specifically describes the development of logotherapy and existential analysis (the sketch was published in an anthology on different schools of psychotherapy  See the Tagungs- und Vortragsprogramm 1947. Wien: Österreichische Gesellschaft für Neurologie and Gesellschaft der Ärzte in Wien. 4

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and their founders); hence, no mention is made in this article of Frankl’s pioneering work in developing one of Europe’s first tranquilizers either, no mention is made of Frankl’s research on the corrugator phenomenon, no mention made of his work on the physiological substrates of certain phobias, and so on – indeed, no mention is made of much of Frankl’s medical work and publications as a neurologist, as the article is primarily concerned with the development of logotherapy and existential analysis in the context of psychotherapy. And Pytell also omits that Frankl had indeed covered the subject just a year earlier (1972)—and, incidentally, in several biographical lectures throughout the years. In other words: only because Pytell was unable to locate these sources and instead found a brief biographical sketch, he concludes that these sources therefore do not exist; and because he thinks they do not exist, he accuses Frankl of hiding and obscuring the facts. I can only quote Janik, (2007) once more, who complained that Pytell “has simply not done his homework” and demonstrates an “ignorance of fact” that is “hardly excusable.” Or for that matter, Wolfgang Neugebauer’s assessment of Pytell’s approach in the foreword of this book: “a multitude of manipulations and factual errors, as well as ignorance of scientific literature and relevant archive materials.” Q: To round off this chapter: how would you evaluate Frankl’s rescue attempts from a contemporary perspective? A: I would like to answer with a counter question: then as now—what else should one expect from a doctor in hospital who receives severe cases from the emergency ward, if not that he heals, helps, and saves lives as far as is within his power, whenever and however possible? And interestingly—to place Frankl’s rescue attempts at the Rothschild Hospital in a larger and less contentious context—there is the contemporary case of Jonathan Simms, an 18-year-old Creutzfeldt-Jakob patient, who was treated with a comparable intervention (direct injection of drugs into the affected brain areas).5 This was also an emergency measure and, owing to a dearth of experience with a rare disease, a relatively experimental operation, which was, however, nonetheless authorized by the commissions and Supreme Court in Great Britain, because there was no other hope for the patient. Not only was the intervention, in part, effective; after a few treatments, the patient was in a stable condition—an outcome the non-physician Pytell declares impossible. In order to put the ethical questions around Frankl’s rescue attempts into perspective, I’d like to quote the father of the boy who was exposed to this experimental treatment: Yes, this is an experimental treatment, but we are not experimenting for experiment’s sake. We do not know if it will work. But if he dies, I will know I did everything I could. My wife

5  See the discussion and an analysis of the court case and decision in: Dyer, O. (2003). Family finds hospital willing to give experimental CJD treatment. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 326(7379), p. 8. For a discussion of the wider implications and the “right to try” in: Meyerson, D. (2017). Medical negligence determinations, the “right to try,” and expanded access to innovative treatments. Journal of bioethical inquiry, 14(3), p.  385-400 and Carrieri, D., Peccatori, F.  A., & Boniolo, G. (2018). The ethical plausibility of the ‘right to try’ laws. Critical reviews in oncology/ hematology, 122, p. 64-71.

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and I will know in our hearts that we tried everything and that his death will not have been in vain.6

It is remarkable to what extent this statement matches the closing remarks of Frankl’s (1942) article in which he describes these rescue attempts: Besides, it may be worth mentioning that, when it comes to suicides, we take the position that everything that can therapeutically be done, should be done. For we do not share the opinion to let “fate” run its course or to “fall into its hands.” Much rather, we believe that we have to save lives where we can (Frankl, 1942, p. 60).

This may be another crossroads of perspectives and approaches: Pytell does not see the individual patient in his or her relationship with the physician as helper, but a collective of Jewish patients and Jewish doctors, from a primarily political angle. However, these patients were first and foremost severely ill human beings under the care of their medical doctors, not political projections—just like the young CJD patient is not just an anonymous quantity, but someone who, as an individual person, presents those near him with the challenge to help, wherever and however possible. This is not the place to elaborate on this question or to enter into an extensive debate with Pytell. In any case, such an extensive debate would be almost impossible, for the simple reason that Pytell does not present any substantial arguments to bolster his position but makes do with more or less subtle semantic constructions masquerading as “arguments” in addition to misrepresentation or omission of actual historical sources. The result does not always turn out well and in many cases, it is simply inappropriate. Especially so when Pytell notes in conclusion of this chapter that Frankl, his parents and his first wife Tilly were finally “grotesquely” deported to the concentration camp, notwithstanding the “collaboration with the Nazis” still alleged by Pytell, and that Frankl must have “probably felt lucky” (Pytell, 2015, p. 102) to be sent “only” to Theresienstadt, instead of straight to Auschwitz (Pytell, 2005, p.  113). While it is to Pytell’s credit that he acknowledges that what he calls the “privileged ghetto was not much different from a concentration camp” (Pytell, 2005, p. 113)— Pytell’s description of the deportation of Frankl, his parents and his first wife as “grotesque” certainly is not the most obvious description one would under normal circumstances think of in connection with deportations to the concentration camp, let alone a reason to “probably feel lucky.” Q: Pytell also highlights the fact that Frankl had the nickname “Nerve Goebbels” at the Rothschild Hospital – “for good reason,” as Pytell writes. A: This is another misleading claim, and another case where Pytell could have done himself a favor by leaving aside his above-mentioned “revulsion” and “contempt” for a moment and asking Frankl himself, or at least enquiring with us at the

 For a discussion of this case, see http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3254.

6

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Fig. 5.2  On the subject of Pytell’s chapter heading, “The Herr Doctor stumbles along”: medical certificate of July 1945, regarding the health damage sustained by Frankl in the concentration camp: “Frostbite of all three degrees in fingers and toes.” (© Viktor Frankl Archive, Vienna)

archive—or even easier: trying an only slightly more attentive reading of Frankl’s memoirs, for he cites the latter as the sole source for this allegation. Pytell writes: At the Rothschild Hospital, Frankl was the head of neurology and was jokingly (and for good reason) given the nickname “Nerve Goebbels” (Pytell, 2005, p. 97).

Pytell refers to Frankl’s memoirs as the source for this quotation—however, the passage tells a very different story: Years later, when I was already the medical head of the neurological department of the Vienna Poliklinik [where Frankl started working in 1946/1947, i.e. after the war – AB], I gave a reception for my staff. My wife got one of the doctors drunk to find out which nickname I had among my colleagues. He finally gave it away. They called me “Nerve Goebbels” (Frankl, 1995, p. 58).

So—what do the facts say? Frankl was not given the nickname “Nerve Goebbels” at the Rothschild Hospital, which would anyway have been extremely unusual given the conditions among the Jewish medical staff, but after his release from the concentration camp and his return to a liberated Vienna, at the Vienna Poliklinik. As I found this story rather curious, I asked Eleonore Frankl, Viktor Frankl’s wife, about it. She confirmed the story and explained how this nickname among Frankl’s staff had come about: this episode occurred in 1949, when Frankl still had a slight limp as a result of the forced labor (see Fig. 5.2) in the Kaufering concentration camp7 7  Probably a consequence of the forced labor in the Kaufering concentration camp in the winter of 1944. 1945, after the liberation, a medical certificate issued by a physician diagnosed “extensive

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Fig. 5.3  Prescription and stamp: Viktor “Israel” Frankl, head of the neurological department of the Rothschild Hospital. “Authorized to provide medical care to Jews only.” (© Viktor Frankl Archive, Vienna)

and was markedly emaciated, as photographs from that period confirm—not unlike Goebbels. That much to Pytell’s somewhat cynical comment that Frankl had been given the nickname “for good reason”: as a result of his internment in four concentration camps, and particularly the forced labor of winter 1944 in the Dachau satellite camps of Türkheim and Kaufering, Frankl slightly dragged one leg and was emaciated. I might add that, alluding to the limp, Pytell tastefully entitled a chapter of his book “The Herr Doctor stumbles along” (Pytell, 2005, p. 89). What’s more, Frankl was widely known as an excellent orator, while in the years immediately after the war Goebbels still had a reputation as the prototype of a shrewd, if feared, public speaker. These three parallels: physique, limp, and rhetoric talent resulted in some members of Frankl’s department giving him the nickname “Nerve Goebbels.” Whatever one may make of this—to hold it against Frankl would seem a bit far-fetched. After all, his wife had to first get the doctor in question drunk in order to finally elicit the nickname from him; Frankl therefore presumably was not hitherto aware of it. Either way, one cannot hold Frankl to account for the nickname given him by his colleagues at the Poliklinik. Pytell, on the other hand, can be held to account for misrepresenting even this matter to the extent of simply moving the entire episode to the Rothschild Hospital, thus entirely changing the context and implications. This, then, is Pytell’s conclusion: “The Herr Doctor stumbles along” and “for good reason.” (Fig. 5.3).

hunger dementia, tachycardia and myocardial damage” as well as “frostbite of all three degrees on fingers and toes,” see Fig. 5.2.

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References Dönhardt, A. (1959). Die Therapie der Schlafmittelvergiftungen. In Ergebnisse der Inneren Medizin und Kinderheilkunde (Vol. 4, pp. 1–51). Springer. Frankl, V. E. (1942). Pervitin intrazisternal. Ars Medici (Schweiz), 32(1), 58–60. Frankl, V. E. (1995). Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht. Lebenserinnerungen. Beltz. Frankl, V. E. (1997). Recollections. An autobiography. Plenum Press. Frankl, V.  E. (2005a). Ärztliche Seelsorge. Grundlagen der Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Deuticke. Frankl, V. E. (2005b). In A. Batthyány, K. Biller, & E. Fizzotti (Eds.), … trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen und ausgewählte Briefe 1945-1949. Edition der Gesammelten Werke von Viktor Frankl (Vol. 1). Böhlau. Frankl, V. E. (2005c). Frühe Schriften 1923 – 1942. Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Gabriele Vesely-Frankl. Maudrich. Frankl, V.  E. (2015). Es kommt der Tag, da bist du frei: Unveröffentlichte Texte und Reden. Kösel-Verlag. Goeschel, C. (2015). Suicide in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press. Hoff, H. (1952). Professor Dr. Otto Pötzl - 75 Jahre. Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, 102, 971f. Janik, A. (2007). Viktor Frankl. Review. Central European History, 2, 3. Jensen, A. S. D. (2002). Jüdische Gemeinden, Vereine, Stiftungen und Fonds. “Arisierung” und Restitution. Historikerkommision. Kwiet, K. (1984). The ultimate refuge: Suicide in the Jewish Community under the Nazis. The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 29(1), 135–167. Pytell, T. (2005). Viktor Frankl – Ende eines Mythos? Studienverlag. Pytell, T. (2015). Viktor Frankl’s search for meaning: An emblematic 20th-century life (Vol. 23). Berghahn Books. Pytell, T. (2017). Criticizing a saint (Part 2). Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday. com//us/blog/authoritarian-­therapy/201708/criticizing-­saint-­part-­2 Rosenkranz, H. (1978). Verfolgung und Selbstbehauptung. Die Juden in Osterreich 1933-1945. Herold. zur Verth, C. (1951). Pervitinbehandlung bei Schlafmittelvergiftung. Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, 76(24), 806–807.

Chapter 6

1942–1945: Theresienstadt – Auschwitz – Kaufering – Türkheim

Q: Let’s come to the time after deportation—Pytell suggests, in the introduction to his chapter on Frankl’s time in the concentration camp, that Frankl had a penchant for borderline and challenging experiences and thus almost looked forward to being deported. Keeping in mind that Frankl spent 3 years in concentration camps, and that he lost his entire family there (with the exception of his sister), this sounds rather puzzling. A: Pytell argues as follows here: Frankl was a passionate mountaineer and climbing occasionally takes one to the limits of one’s strength. Frankl occasionally said that mountaineering differs from other sports in that it is first and foremost a contest with oneself, rather than a competition with others. Finally, on the topic of “borderline experiences,” Pytell recalls that Frankl, together with Pötzl, wrote a research paper on the mental and psychophysical reactions to mountaineering accidents and falls in 1952 (Frankl & Pötzl, 1952). Here, he again gets the date of this publication wrong, but this is a minor point. It seems that Pytell has never read this article, for he maintains that Frankl and Pötzl experimented with “controlled falls” (Pytell, 2005, p. 112). Pytell seemingly imagines that the two pushed each other, or possibly other test subjects, from a mountain in a “controlled” manner and recorded their reaction in order to study the “aesthetics of fear,” particularly the aesthetics of the “fear of death” (ibid.). The actual research work of course consisted of the study of reports of mountaineers that had survived falls with a view to possible phenomenological similarities or individual differences in the experiences. In a further step, Pytell quotes Frankl’s remark that “man’s desire aims at exploring the limits of his potential, his utmost boundaries of his capabilities” (Frankl, quoted after Pytell, 2005, p. 112). And that is all it takes for Pytell to combine all these elements for the assertion that his deportation to the concentration camp finally presented Frankl with the long-awaited opportunity to introduce his “demeanor of fearlessness” and interest in the “aesthetics of fear—[particularly]

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that of the fear of death” to the next phase of his life—that of the concentration camps (ibid.). This is somewhat preposterous in itself and becomes puzzling in the greater context when we consider that Pytell had earlier claimed that Frankl did not remain in Vienna on account of protecting his parents, but because he wanted to practice paradoxical intention and attitudinal adjustment in the concentration camp. The question remains, however, why then Frankl would have applied for an American visa under these circumstances at all. Anyway, Pytell does not mention the actual course of events: not a word, for example, about the desperation that Frankl expressed regarding the deportation of his parents and that of his first wife, Tilly. Nor about the many apparently small everyday humiliations which were part of daily life after the “Anschluss” even before Frankl, as Pytell writes, finally had the opportunity, from September 1942, to study the “aesthetics of fear” and fulfill his need and “search for extreme experiences” during his 3-year detention in four concentration camps (Pytell, 2005, p. 112). Q: At Theresienstadt, Frankl was, like many other physicians, assigned to the Health Department. That’s also where he met the Berlin Rabbi and pioneer of Reform Judaism, Leo Baeck. Baeck, who tried to encourage fellow inmates at Theresienstadt with lectures and sermons, also asked Frankl to give lectures (see Fig. 6.1). With the help of Erich Munk, the medical director of the Health Department, and at the urgings of the latter’s assistant, Karel Fleischmann, Frankl furthermore established a mobile psychological counseling center at Theresienstadt. The socalled shock squad was made up of doctors and volunteers who gave solace to Theresienstadt inmates who were in psychological distress. The group primarily looked after the weak and helpless at Theresienstadt: the old, the sick, and the mentally ill. The group saw an additional important task in alleviating the “admission shock” of new arrivals at Theresienstadt. Whenever a member of this group heard of potentially suicidal inhabitants of the Theresienstadt ghetto, he or she went to see them in order to offer them an opportunity to discuss their situation. Pytell criticizes this, too, and constructs another case of “collaboration” from it. Can you briefly give us your views on this? A: First of all, Berkeley (1993) reports approvingly on these efforts in his reference book on Theresienstadt. And, unlike Pytell, he provides deep insight, based on his source work and historical research, into life and death at Theresienstadt. Berkeley also confirms that the number of suicides at Theresienstadt decreased significantly as a result of the initiatives of Frankl, Jonas, Baeck, and Fleischmann (Berkeley, 1993). Yet Pytell comments this as follows: Frankl’s humanitarian efforts were of utmost importance for the proper functioning of the camp. And again Frankl had found a niche. His work was a humanitarian project which the Nazis approved of because they did not tolerate suicides in the camps. But Frankl’s effort put him in a precarious situation between the National Socialists and the community of the inmates (Pytell, 2005, p. 115).

Leaving aside the question whether the superlative (“of utmost importance”) is appropriate here, one can assume that the camp’s order was indeed put to a test by

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Fig. 6.1  Leaflet for the lectures held for fellow inmates by Viktor Frankl on behalf of Rabbi Leo Baeck and Prof. Dr. Emil Utitz at Theresienstadt. (© Viktor Frankl Archive, Vienna)

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every suicide in the concentration camps. The Nazis feared that a high suicide rate would challenge the public image of the so-called model ghetto Theresienstadt: Suicide was strictly prohibited. Offenders who survived were taken to the ill-famed “small fortress,” and the same punishment was meted out to others. Relatives were punished in keeping with the principle of “kinship liability”; fellow prisoners who kept silence about a suicidal act, contrary to camp regulations […] were called to account. (Kwiet, 1984, p. 163)

One can scarcely surmise the desperation of the inmates who nonetheless committed suicide at Theresienstadt, if they acted on their intention in the knowledge that they were putting their relatives and friends at such a risk. Pytell, on the other hand, combines two simple facts into the allegation of collaboration with, or approval of, the camp administration. The first fact: that the group around Frankl, Fleischmann and Jonas tried to alleviate the suffering of these people, especially the elderly, the ill and the weak; the second fact: that the camp administration at Theresienstadt feared an excessive suicide rate amongst inmates. These two facts suffice for him to insinuate that the “Nazis welcomed this initiative” (Pytell, 2005, p. 115), thereby suggesting that, put differently, the group around Frankl, Fleischmann, and Jonas acted not so much as pastoral carer support, but for the Nazis, as it were, maybe even as promoters and advocates of the ghetto. Pytell prudently omits to mention that the group around Frankl, Fleischmann, and Jonas worked underground—and did so of necessity. Instead, he creates the false impression that Frankl took this initiative with the consent or support of the camp administration. Yet what would be more obvious for a psychiatrist, who has devoted himself to suicide prevention for decades, than to make an attempt, even in the conditions of Theresienstadt, to help those in mental anguish, especially the elderly, the confused, and the sick? Should the group around Frankl and Rabbi Jonas have stood by, impassive and apathetic, as people committed suicide—say, by running against the electric fence that spanned the camp—putting their respective relatives at risk? Moreover, the group tried to alleviate the admission shock of the new arrivals at Theresienstadt—not least at the behest of Leo Baeck, who, as a dedicated Rabbi (as well as Regina Jonas as Rabbi and Frankl and Fleischmann as doctors) was an obvious confidant for the Jewish community within the camp. Should this same group have been indifferent to those in sheer desperation—only because the camp administration happened to—albeit for entirely different reasons—oppose suicide? At any rate, Pytell asserts that the group, by helping those in psychological need, ended up “in a precarious situation between the National Socialists and the community of the inmates” (Pytell, 2005, p. 115). Perhaps the group would not have ended up in what Pytell alleges to be a “precarious situation” if they had done nothing at all. The question remains, how Pytell would have judged this—inasmuch as one wishes to confer to Pytell the right to continuously pass unsolicited moral judgment over others, from behind his desk of a decent office in sunny California, and 80 years later. From a historical point of view, however, one should add that the group’s pastoral work at Theresienstadt had consequences that cannot easily be squared with Pytell’s interpretation. Firstly, the Frankl archives in Vienna hold several letters from former Theresienstadt inmates, thanking Frankl for his erstwhile help. Some of them are

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very moving documents and testimony of just the kind of humanity that Pytell tries to denounce. Secondly, the camp administration at Theresienstadt apparently did not share Pytell’s assessment that the work of Frankl, Jonas and Fleischmann was “of utmost importance for the proper functioning of the camp” (Pytell, 2005, p. 114): all three of them were deported to Auschwitz in 1944, within a year and a half after inception of the secret counseling initiative. Frankl was sent to Auschwitz on October 19, 1944, Fleischmann was gassed on the 23rd October, Regina Jonas on 2nd December 1944 at Auschwitz-Birkenau—a detail Pytell prefers not mention. But it is somewhat difficult to argue that the camp administration of Theresienstadt would, of all people, deport the very three individuals whose work they “condoned as being of utmost importance for the proper functioning of the camp” to the extermination camp Auschwitz, where Fleischmann and Jonas were subsequently murdered. Pytell implies that they died as collaborators. And Frankl later repeatedly said that the best did not survive (Frankl, 1949). One wonders who is in a better position to know.

References Berkeley, G. (1993). Hitler’s gift: The story of Theresienstadt. Branden Books. Frankl, V. E. (1949). In memoriam. Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 61, 226. Frankl, V.  E., & Pötzl, O. (1952). Über die seelischen Zustände während des Absturzes. Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie, 123, 362–280. Kwiet, K. (1984). The ultimate refuge: Suicide in the Jewish Community under the Nazis. The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 29(1), 135–167. Pytell, T. (2005). Viktor Frankl – Ende eines Mythos? Studienverlag.

Part IV

Aftermath

Chapter 7

1946: Man’s Search for Meaning

Q: Let us come to the next allegation: Pytell’s criticism of the book Man’s Search for Meaning is that Frankl misleads his readers. Could you comment on this? A: Pytell maintains that Man’s Search for Meaning is misleading and deceptive, i.e. that Frankl misled his readers and listeners about how long he had spent in which of the four camps he was interned in between 1942 and 1945. More specifically, Pytell alleges that Frankl lied about the actual duration of his internment at Auschwitz (Pytell, 2005, 130f.). Pytell even claims to have himself “exposed and revealed the fact that Frankl only spent 3  days at Auschwitz” (Pytell, 2005, p.  167, emphasis AB), which seems to imply that Frankl did everything in his power to deceive his readers about this point. But first the facts: Together with his first wife (who later died in Bergen-Belsen), Frankl was on transport ES (October 19, 1944) from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz (see Fig. 7.1), and after going through a number of selections, was transferred to the Dachau complex after having spent only a few days in Auschwitz. As editor of the complete edition of Viktor Frankl, I probably know most of Frankl’s biographical texts and lectures. And thus I can say with considerable certainty that once again, Pytell’s allegation that Frankl claimed to have stayed in Auschwitz more than just a few days is false: Frankl has never made any such claims. To refute Pytell’s allegation, it should be enough to simply quote the numerous sources where Frankl states that he was at Auschwitz only for several days—and there are more than enough of them; on the other hand, I do not know of a single biographical (or other) Frankl lecture or text or interview that suggests, or even hints at, anything else. Already in one of his earliest testimonies—a report written in October 1946—for example, he writes: We then were sent to Auschwitz. A few days later, I was sent to one of the Dachau camps where I was a force laborer (Frankl, 2005b, p. 149).

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Fig. 7.1  Viktor Frankl’s Transportation Card—Transport ES from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, 19th of Oct. 1944

Particularly when asked questions on the same subject, Frankl was prone to using standard phrases. Concerning the duration of his internment in the various camps, he said the same throughout the years (i.e. 1945–1997): But I only spent a few days at Auschwitz and was then taken on a two-day journey, in a cattle car, to Kaufering, a subcamp of Dachau. After that, I was at Türkheim.1

That much to Pytell’s “exposure” and “discovery.” There are numerous such quotes from throughout the years. And why should Frankl claim otherwise? After his experience of the camps and after most of his family had been exterminated, Frankl had no need to “embellish” the story of his suffering. And in Man’s Search for Meaning, when Frankl writes about his impressions at Auschwitz, he describes the overcrowded barracks and the catastrophic food situation; in his 4 days at Auschwitz he only received one ration of bread. He immediately goes on to describe his last selection at Auschwitz, which led to his transfer to the Dachau subcamp Kaufering. Although Frankl tries to predominantly present an account of his inner experience in Man’s Search for Meaning, his remarks about the length of his stay at Auschwitz and the two Dachau subcamps are quite explicit.

 This quote, for example, originates in a biographical lecture that Frankl gave on June 26, 1975, in Salzburg, in the context of an interview series, organised by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF); numerous additional lectures from around 1960 to 1997, containing the same quote almost verbatim, are available in the archive; some of them were published in books or journals or are available as tape recordings. 1

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But Pytell’s intention is more than just to accuse Frankl of an (alleged) lie concerning the actual duration of his internment at Auschwitz; much rather, he wants to deny his authority or ability to comment on the camps as a psychiatrist and survivor, because he considers Frankl’s internment at Auschwitz “too short.” In summary, Pytell’s allegation is that Frankl spreads untruths in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, to the extent that this book is “contradictory in its portrayal of facts, and by no means free of deceptions” (Pytell, 2005, 130f.). These “deceptions” concern the duration of Frankl’s detention at Auschwitz on the one hand, and therefore, secondly, his qualification to present his perspective on the camps at all in Man’s Search for Meaning, or any of his other works. Q: What do you say to this allegation? A: I am not sure whether Pytell read the introductory chapter of Man’s Search for Meaning. Therein Frankl clearly states that this book is not about the famous large camps, but about the smaller ones: It should be said from the outset that the experiences described in this book are less an account of the famous large camps, than of the infamous subcamps, the satellites of the main ones.

Is not Auschwitz just such a famous large camp, of which Frankl specifically writes that his account is “less” concerned with? Pytell, on the other hand, writes: Although Frankl pretends to reflect the reality of the experiences of Auschwitz, the truth is that he escaped the worst atrocities of the camps (or denied them) (Pytell, 2005, p. 131).

In the end, Pytell criticizes that Frankl dedicates some 20 pages of his book to Auschwitz. But does the counting of pages do justice to what happened when and where? Pytell seems to demand Frankl to describe the admission shock at Auschwitz, the separation from his first wife, Tilly, in Auschwitz, the loss of the manuscript of his first book manuscript, The Doctor and the Soul, in the disinfection chamber of Auschwitz, the uncertainty of the fate of his mother, left behind at Theresienstadt (and just widowed after his father’s death there [see Fig.  7.2]) when Frankl was deported to Auschwitz, etc., in such brevity, according to some arithmetic key, that the length of description corresponds to the time he spent at the camp, expressed in days: Frankl was deported in September 1942, and liberated end of April 1945, thus he was in the camps for approximately 945 days. Man’s Search for Meaning counts 170 pages; so if we applied this simple arithmetic key to his book, Frankl should have covered 5.5 days per page, giving him slightly more than half a page to cover the role of Auschwitz during these years. But what then, for example, about episodes such as the following, which took place on October 23, 1944 when both Viktor Frankl and his wife Tilly (married for only 3 years) were both in Auschwitz, yet separated since the first selection: I shall never forget how I awoke from the deep sleep of exhaustion on my second night in Auschwitz – roused by music. The senior warden of the hut had some kind of celebration going on in his room, which was near the entrance of the hut. Tipsy voices howled some hackneyed tunes. Suddenly there was a silence and into the night a violin sang a desperately sad tango, an unusual tune not spoiled by frequent playing. The violin wept and a part of me

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Fig. 7.2  Theresienstadt, February 1943: Death Certificate of Gabriel Frankl (Viktor Frankl’s father). (© Viktor Frankl Archive, Vienna)

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wept with it, for on that day someone had a twenty-fourth birthday. That someone lay in another part of the Auschwitz camp, possibly a few hundred or thousands of yards away, and yet completely out of reach. That someone was my wife (Frankl, 1992, 53f.).

And neither should we forget that Frankl’s mother was deported to Auschwitz only a few days after him and Tilly and was gassed immediately upon her arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as was, in all likelihood, his brother. Frankl thus dedicated his book Man’s Search for Meaning to his “dead mother” (Pytell fails to mention this, either). Without doubt, then, Auschwitz was of central significance and deeply emotionally relevant within Frankl’s 3-year internment in four concentration camps, and history, especially personally experienced history, is after all not measured by the period of time objectively passed, but rather by what happened within that period of time. Hence one cannot help but wonder just how briefly Frankl would have had to write about events at and around Auschwitz in order to avoid being reproached, some 80 years later—by none other than Pytell—for giving too much space to these experiences in his book. At the same time, given the publication history of Man’s Search for Meaning, one should differentiate between Frankl’s autobiographical memoirs and the book Man’s Search for Meaning. Importantly, Man’s Search for Meaning, as is well known within logotherapy, but perhaps not to many readers, was first published anonymously and was not initially intended as Viktor Frankl’s openly identified biographical chronicle of his years in the concentration camps (no author’s name is in fact printed on the cover of the first edition, see Fig. 7.3). Frankl did not at first want to be openly identified as the author of this book; he merely wanted to report what life in the smaller camps was like—as seen through the eyes of the psychologist. Hence, only later editions carry the author’s name on the cover. Frankl writes at the beginning of Man’s Search for Meaning: This therefore constitutes a chronicle of experiences, more than a factual account; the experience aspect of what was suffered thousandfold by millions is described here: the concentration camp “seen from within”  – from the viewpoint of the person immediately experiencing it. This chronicle is therefore not concerned with the great abominations  – those abominations that have already been described multiple times (without, for all that, being universally believed) – but the many small agonies, or, in other words, the question: how was everyday life in the concentration camp reflected in the soul of the average inmate?

Thus with this book, Frankl did not intend to present a mere documentation of the years in the concentration camps, but rather described his own inner experiences within the camps (“the concentration camp ‘seen from within’—from the viewpoint of the person immediately experiencing it”). In large part, that is also the reason he describes several personal experiences in the third person (or, if described in the first person, later on commented on them in the third person perspective, in order to keep up with his intention to be not identified with the anonymous author of Man’s Search for Meaning). Pytell, however, has either overlooked this, or preferred to ignore and keep it from his readers for some other reason. Either way, for at least four reasons, the actual circumstances give little credence to the idea that Frankl, in his book,

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Fig. 7.3  Cover of the first edition of “Man’s Search for Meaning” (with its original title “A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp”)—without any mention of the author. It had initially been Frankl’s intention to publish the book anonymously. Pytell’s assertion that Frankl had intended to use this book to spread heroic tales about himself, in his own name, is therefore at odds with the actual genesis of the concentration camp testimonial. (© Viktor Frankl Archive, Vienna)

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“boasted” about his experience of Auschwitz in order to distinguish himself in the role of the victim: Firstly, Frankl published the first edition of his account, Man’s Search for Meaning, anonymously. Hence Frankl could hardly hope for heroic credentials on the strength of an anonymously published book (as Pytell alleges). Secondly, the market for testimonials from the concentration camp was in any case very weak in post-war Austria. Such accounts simply were not bought—few wanted to read them. The liberated former inmates of the concentration camps were trying to come to terms with their own losses and experiences and memories; and those who shared in the guilt—be it by commission or omission—usually were not too motivated to remind themselves, by means of such testimonials, of the injustice and crimes they had committed, condoned or allowed to happen. And indeed, Man’s Search for Meaning did not perform well on the market; only few copies were sold and almost the whole print run of the second edition was destroyed in order to save storage place not to be wasted for a book which nobody bought. This was predictable; and it makes Pytell’s narrative that Frankl intended to play the hero on the strength of this book all the less plausible. Thirdly, he could do so even less, since he describes many of his experiences in the third person without attributing them to himself as the author in order to keep anonymity. Fourthly, literally from the day of his liberation, Frankl in any case refused to identify himself, or to be identified, via his victimhood. And with his assertion to have posthumously “exposed the fact that Frankl in fact only spent 3 days at Auschwitz” (Pytell, 2005, p. 167), Pytell claims a discovery that wouldn’t have required more than reading Frankl’s autobiographical works. One would expect a historian, who accuses a historical figure of lying, to at least present a citation to actually prove the lie. Q: And Pytell does not do this? A: No, because as we have seen, from the day of his return to Vienna, Frankl left no one in any doubt as to the duration of his internment in this or the other respective camps. In his lectures, he unfailingly talked of “3 days” or “a few days.” This was equally brought to light by the letters and early post-liberation writings that have since been published (Frankl, 2015). If Pytell has doubts about this, it is either because he did not do proper research of available sources, or because he is determined to misconstrue Frankl. And we should not forget what we are forced to discuss here: namely whether Frankl should have stayed at Auschwitz just a little longer, in order to escape Pytell’s criticism of not having been there long enough in order to being able to even discuss the implications of Auschwitz, let alone elaborate on the role it played in his personal and his family’s life. Q: Can you elaborate on what you meant when you said that Man’s Search for Meaning is not strictly speaking a biographical account? A: Of course. First of all: Man’s Search for Meaning is indeed an autobiographical book; but it is necessary at times to have some prior knowledge of Frankl’s biography in order to be able to exactly relate certain episodes, because, as mentioned

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before, he described certain episodes in the third person in this book which he in fact experienced from a first person perspective. This goes to show that, in contrast to the impression Pytell tries to create, Frankl does not seek to give himself heroic airs in his biographical writing. On the contrary: the “heroic” passages are often precisely the ones which are written in the third person, as if Frankl was a witness to these events rather than the one who experienced them—which is consistent in that he intended to publish the book anonymously. An example: In his first book to be published after his return to Vienna, The Doctor and the Soul, Frankl relates the reconstruction of its manuscript in the Türkheim camp: We know of the following case: A few dozen typhus sufferers shared a barrack in a concentration camp. They were all delirious, apart from one, who, in order to tried to escape the nightly delirium by deliberately staying awake; however, he used his feverish agitation and mental stimulation to reconstruct, in the course of 16 nights, an unpublished scientific manuscript that had been taken from him at the concentration camp, by scribbling minute shorthand keywords onto tiny pieces of paper in the dark.

Today we know, of course, that this case, “known to him,” was none other than Frankl himself. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl discusses it—at first anonymously—but in the first person. Frankl was obviously serious about publishing his concentration camp book anonymously and, in order to protect his anonymity, he ascribed some of his own experiences to anonymous others when he subsequently wrote about them. In other words: there are no surprises when one compares Frankl’s memoirs, the documents from his private archives, some of which are included in the first two volumes of the Edition of Collected Works (Frankl, 2005b), and Man’s Search for Meaning. Pytell, on the other hand, did not seem to have exerted himself much in researching in the background of the bibliographical history of Frankl’s first two books written after the liberation, i.e. Man’s Search for Meaning and The Doctor and the Soul, for he comments on the just-quoted passage about the reconstruction of The Doctor and the Soul in the camp as follows: Frankl created “distance” to his near-fatal experience of Typhus by discussing it in the third person. In so doing, he was able to congratulate himself on his own survival. In a certain way, Frankl thus already overcame the ordeal (Pytell, 2005, p. 119).

Next to the fact that one wonders why telling the story of one’s near-fatal illness in the third, rather than the first person, would make for self-congratulatory material, Pytell’s account and interpretation is based on yet another error: Pytell reversed the actual order of events. Frankl first wrote The Doctor and the Soul (in which said episode is presented in the third person perspective) and only later that year described this experience in the anonymously published Man’s Search for Meaning, in the first person. And there is no inner distance here whatsoever—on the contrary, this is a very moving passage in Man’s Search for Meaning, which Frankl touches upon twice in his book. And just how inappropriate Pytell’s remark that Frankl had “congratulated himself” on his own survival is, is demonstrated by the letters written immediately after

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Frankl’s liberation and return to Vienna. Here is an excerpt from one of them (August 1945), from exactly the time Pytell’s above-quoted comment (“he was able to congratulate himself on his own survival”, “Frankl thus already overcame the ordeal”) refer to: So, I am now entirely alone. Those who do not have an analogous fate can’t understand me. I am dreadfully tired, dreadfully forlorn, dreadfully lonely. I have nothing left to hope for and nothing left to fear. I have no joy in life, only duty; my conscience keeps me going … And so, I have established myself once more, so I dictate changes to my manuscript, both for the publishing house and the habilitation. But no success gives me pleasure; everything is weightless, futile, and vain in my own eyes; I feel distance to everything. It signifies nothing to me, is meaningless. The best have not returned (my best friend [Hubert Gsur] was beheaded) and have abandoned me. In the camp, one felt as if life’s low point was attained – and then, coming back, one had to see that it was all futile, that what had kept one alive has come to nought, that when one returned to humanity one could still sink into yet more bottomless suffering. All that remains is to weep and leaf through the psalms for a bit. (Frankl, 1945/2005b, p. 184)

I leave it to the readers to decide whether these are the words of a man who, having lost his closest relatives and his first wife, can’t think of anything better than to “congratulate himself on his own survival”—and who had “already overcome the ordeal,” as Pytell writes. Q: You said earlier on that Pytell wanted to deny Frankl his authority to talk about Auschwitz or the concentration camps at all. Can you elaborate on this? A: There is certainly a kind of disquieting undertone in Pytell’s assertion that Frankl was in no position to pronounce on the abominations of Auschwitz, because, as Pytell puts it, he escaped them (Pytell, 2005, p. 131). In any case, Pytell is using a typically revisionist argument here: revisionists of any political persuasion are keen to muzzle the witnesses of the Shoah, or to undermine their credibility, in order to then promote their own interpretation or view of the camps. This means that the accounts of the eyewitnesses are first deconstructed and then reconstructed according to one’s own tenets. Pytell’s chapter on the interpretation of the Holocaust contains a key passage in that regard—it expresses in his own words what we discussed earlier: that revisionists, as soon as the generation of witnesses who were adult victims of the Holocaust at the relevant time age and eventually die out, tend to supplant testimonies and give center stage to their own, often ideologically and politically (or otherwise) preconceived views. Pytell writes: We must be sensitive, because memory is both problematic and deceptive for the survivor, who is traumatized and suffers the guilt of simply being alive. An honest engagement and reappraisal of the past is therefore a rare accomplishment. Maybe it’s only now, at the end of the 20th century, that we can begin to achieve clarity […]. (Pytell, 2005, p. 121)

This is an important point, the fundamental dilemma of which Frankl also discusses in a different context in his appraisals on the psychiatric and psychological aspects of the concentration camp, such as when he writes: While the outsider had too much distance and was hardly able to empathize, the one who was “in the midst of it” and had already acclimatized had long lost the necessary distance.

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7  1946: Man’s Search for Meaning In other words, the fundamental problem was that one had to assume that the yardstick by which to judge this deformed reality of life was itself deformed.

In contrast to Pytell, however, Frankl concludes that the similarity between the memories of independently questioned witnesses basically confirmed their credibility: Notwithstanding these, as it were, epistemological reservations, specialists in psychopathology and psychotherapy condensed the relevant material of their self-observation, as well as their observation of others, the sum of their experiences, into theories, little of which can be rejected as being subjective: by and large, they are essentially consistent. (Frankl, 1961, p. 751)

Yet Pytell discounts this with a program of his very own version of “an honest engagement and reappraisal of the past,” while also challenging the recollections of the actual witnesses. This is, once again, a highly questionable position: after the Holocaust generation was deprived of their liberty and dignity, who are we to seek to deny their right to their memory (“both problematic and deceptive”)? Moreover, I believe that by now we have ample reason to doubt that, of all people, someone with Pytell’s track record of misrepresentations and falsifications is in a position to produce the “rare accomplishment” of “achieving clarity about the Holocaust” (Pytell, 2005, p. 112). And the question still remains: Who would know better than the survivors, who could better testify to the unimaginable than those who have lived through it themselves? This is a common dilemma revisionists face, whereupon they resort to the tried and tested method of attempting to undermine the credibility of the actual witnesses. And once the credibility of the witnesses is undermined, there is room for the contrived narratives of the respective authors. I want to underline once again that I believe and hope that Pytell and right wing revisionism are at opposite ends of the political and ideological spectrum; I emphatically do not want to suggest that Pytell is in cahoots with the neo-National Socialist revisionists, such as the so-called Institute for Historical Review (even though the latter frequently refers to Pytell’s work when it tries to discredit Frankl’s testimony). I do, however, want to point out the methodological overlap between the two—and this entails, apart from sloppy source work, misrepresentations, and selective treatment of sources, the enforcing of preconceived interpretations at the expense of the testimony of those who have actually experienced the Holocaust firsthand. Let us take a specific example concerning Auschwitz: The usual travel time of the prisoner transfers from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz was 2  days. Pytell notes that Frankl wrote that his transfer to Auschwitz “took several days and nights” (Pytell, 2005, p. 116), although, assuming the usual travel time of 2 days, he couldn’t have spent more than one night in the cattle car to Auschwitz (ibid.). In other words: Pytell criticizes that when Frankl writes that he and his fellow inmates were traveling “several days and nights” this creates the false impression that Frankl may have been en route for 2 nights or more. This reminds me of the following: At a logotherapy Conference at the Bavarian Academy in Munich in 2005, activists of a Neonazi splinter group distributed an

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essay, written by a revisionist “historian.” Concerning Frankl, the author primarily dealt with the question whether his account of the inner experience of liberation could possibly reflect the actual events. Frankl writes, towards the end of Man’s Search for Meaning: Then one day, a few days after liberation, you walk through open fields, for miles and miles, through flowering meadows, towards a small town in the vicinity of the camp; larks soar, glide to great heights, and you hear their hymn and jubilation ring out there in the open. There is no one to be seen far and wide, there’s nothing around you but the vast earth and the sky and the larks’ jubilation and clear space.

The author of said article questioned the veracity of this account, because Frankl writes about “flowering meadows” and “soaring larks,” but, according to the author, the weather conditions of spring 1945 “made it appear unlikely” that the meadows were in fact flowering or the larks were soaring. This is roughly the level of criticism that also finds its manifestation in Pytell’s gripe against Frankl’s writing about “several days and nights” as opposed to “2 days and 1 night.” The approach follows the same method and has the same objective: to discredit eyewitnesses. In both cases, a relatively minor detail is given center stage in order to distract from the real substance or to altogether question its validity. And in both cases, a more obvious explanation is ignored: such as that Frankl was released from the camp end of April 1945 and stayed first at Türkheim, and then at the nearby Bad Wörishofen, and that the described experience took place sometime after the liberation, therefore probably in early or mid-May 1945—ergo in early summer, and we can then assume that the meadows did indeed flower and the larks did indeed soar. Or, that on his transport from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, Frankl was in an overcrowded, darkened cattle car, under which circumstances people, even without being exhausted after the years in Theresienstadt, demonstrably easily lose their sense of time and cannot reliably state the duration of a journey of several days down to the hour or perhaps even day. Once again, in the face of the atrocities at issue here, these are trivial matters which would be unworthy to discuss, if the respective authors did not use them to their ends: to undermine the credibility of eyewitnesses, the victims of the Holocaust, in order to propagate their own version of the events.

References Frankl, V.  E. (1946a). Die Existenzanalyse und die Probleme der Zeit. 28. Dezember 1946. In Vortrag am französisch-österreichischen Hochschultreffen in St. Christoph am Arlberg. Frankl, V.  E. (1946b). Zum letzten Mal: Das verhängte Fenster. Wien: Viktor-FranklSchriftenarchiv. In Frankl, V.E. (2006). Zur Psychologie des Konzentrationslagers. Edition der Gesammelten Werke von Viktor Frankl, Vol. 2. Edited by Alexander Batthyány, Karlheinz Biller and Eugenio Fizzotti. Böhlau. Frankl, V.  E. (1946c). Lebenswert und Menschenwürde. In Niemals vergessen! Ein Buch der Anklage, Mahnung und Verpflichtung. Ausstellungskatalog. Wien: Jugend und Volk. In: (2006). Gesammelte Werke Band 2. Böhlau.

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Frankl, V.  E. (1961). Psychologie und Psychiatrie des Konzentrationslagers. In Psychiatrie der Gegenwart (Vol. III, pp. 743–759). Springer. Frankl, V. E. (1992). Man’s search for meaning. Beacon Press. Frankl, V.  E. (2005a). Ärztliche Seelsorge. Grundlagen der Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Deuticke. Frankl, V. E. (2005b). In A. Batthyány, K. Biller, & E. Fizzotti (Eds.), … trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen und ausgewählte Briefe 1945-1949. Edition der Gesammelten Werke von Viktor Frankl (Vol. 1). Böhlau. Frankl, V. E. (2005c). Frühe Schriften 1923 – 1942. Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Gabriele Vesely-Frankl. Maudrich. Frankl, V.  E. (2015). Es kommt der Tag, da bist du frei: Unveröffentlichte Texte und Reden. Kösel-Verlag. Pytell, T. (2005). Viktor Frankl – Ende eines Mythos? Studienverlag.

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Q: Let’s next address Pytell’s discussion of Frankl’s work after liberation. A: First of all, Pytell reproaches Frankl with the following: Frankl offered two different positions regarding the effect the experience of the concentration camps had on his psychological theories (Pytell, 2005, p. 123).

Yet Pytell does in fact quote Frankl’s clear statement that “people think I came back from Auschwitz with a brand-new kind of psychotherapy. That is not the case” (op. cit. Pytell, 2005, p.  123). But Pytell takes issue with Beacon Press, the first American publisher of The Doctor and the Soul, for creating the impression, in its 1959 book ads, that Frankl had developed logotherapy and existential analysis in the concentration camp. Q: Pytell blames Frankl because of Beacon Press’ book advertisement? A: Yes, and note that said advertisement states that What is most important is that this psychotherapy was, as the author point out, not concocted in the philosopher’s arm chair nor at the analyst’s couch; it took shape in the hard school of air-raid shelters and bomb craters; in concentration camps and prisoner-of-war camps (op. cit Pytell, 2015, p. 109).

If Pytell really took this seriously and assumed Frankl to be the author, or at least the approving source, of these lines, the more obvious question would be whether and why Frankl should claim to have ever been in “air-raid shelters, bomb craters, and prisoner-of-war camps.” More generally, though, given the fact that Pytell himself quotes Frankl’s unequivocal (and oft-repeated) statement that he had developed his logotherapy and existential analysis long before his deportation, one cannot but wonder why Pytell should seriously believe that the advertisement of the publishing house was written by Frankl himself.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Batthyány, Viktor Frankl and the Shoah, SpringerBriefs in Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83063-2_8

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Either way, Pytell’s approach here is somewhat inconsistent, for he himself writes in the introduction of his book: “The Holocaust took a central position in the development of Frankl’s thinking and was the driving force behind his analysis of existentialism and nihilism” (Pytell, 2005, p. 17). This itself is a curious assertion, all the more so since Frankl’s earliest writings (i.e. in the late 1920s and 1930s) specifically were concerned with existentialism and especially nihilism—20–10 years before his deportation. The same applies to the original manuscript, written in the 1940s, of the primary textbook of Frankl’s logotherapy and existential analysis, i.e. The Doctor and the Soul, which has since been published (more on this in a moment). Pytell’s assertion that the Holocaust was “the driving force behind his analysis of existentialism and nihilism” (Pytell, 2005, p. 17) additionally jars in particular with his simultaneous (and equally false) assertion that Frankl had developed logotherapy and existential analysis “at the Göring Institute.” As we have seen, both assertions are wrong, apart from the fact that they simply cannot be reconciled with each other—or the actual history of logotherapy and existential analysis. Q: What other criticism concerning Frankl’s discussion of the Holocaust does Pytell express? A: Pytell summarizes the content and objective of The Doctor and the Soul as follows: In the book he recapitulated his criticisms of Freud and Adler […]. Citing from the phenomenological works of Heidegger and Binswanger, Frankl articulated what makes man unique and different from animals (Pytell, 2015, p. 110).

And: One of the Frankl’s central concerns after Auschwitz was the distinction of man from beast (Pytell, 2005, p. 125).

I leave it up to the reader to find even the remotest resemblance to The Doctor and the Soul in this short “summary.” In truth, The Doctor and the Soul is an introduction to meaning- and person-centered psychotherapy, i.e. logotherapy and existential analysis. The book is divided into five main sections whose titles alone give some hints on the true content of the book: (1) from psychotherapy to logotherapy, (2) from psychoanalysis to existential analysis, (3) logotherapy as a psychotherapeutic technique, (4) from secular confession to medical ministry, and (5) psychotherapy on its way to rehumanization. And as to “quoting the phenomenological works of Heidegger and Binswanger” on the differences between animals and humans, Frankl quotes both authors only four times each in the entire book (of 359 pages, i.e. once every 90 pages), and only one single quote by Heidegger refers to the question what distinguishes humans from the animals (and even that only in passing). In contrast, Pytell claims that “Frankl rarely cited Scheler” (Pytell, 2015, p. 85); yet Scheler is quoted no less than about 25 times in The Doctor and the Soul. Pytell’s somewhat misguided discussion of The Doctor and the Soul seems significant for another reason, though. He advocates the theory that in this book, Frankl

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had “already begun the reappraisal towards the end of his internment in the camps, when he was writing under the strain of his typhoid fever” (Pytell, 2005, p. 124). It is clearly somewhat inconsistent when Pytell, only a few pages previously, accuses Frankl of having willfully created (or at least tolerated) the false impression that logotherapy and existential analysis had emerged in the concentration camps, only to himself assert that the main and foundational work of logotherapy and existential analysis did in fact originate in Frankl’s last camp, which once again, is emphatically not the case. In short, Pytell applies several wrong explanatory models to the development as well as the substance, focal points and motives of The Doctor and the Soul. Perhaps this also explains why Pytell, in his further discussion of The Doctor and the Soul, consistently assumes that its core concepts were developed “after Auschwitz” (Pytell, 2005, p. 127), but still at Türkheim concentration camp, when in fact he consistently tries to illustrate this assertion with quotes from the pre-deportation copy of The Doctor and the Soul which was written in Vienna during the early 1940s, i.e. before Frankl was deported to the camps. Pytell writes in that regard: The maxim that Frankl applied to his life after Auschwitz: live as if you lived for the second time [etc.]. Frankl’s relief at having survived is plainly perceptible in the dictum “live as if you lived for the second time …” (Pytell, 2005, p. 127).

Just as “plainly perceptible” is, according to Pytell that Frankl only developed his understanding of transience as a repository of the bygone after the loss of his relatives, as a more or less obvious instrument of rationalization of, and distancing from, his grief over their disappearance: Now that a catastrophe had befallen his family, he added the assertion that transience can’t be perceived as something that deprives life of meaning, for ‘having been still remains a kind of being’ […] (Pytell, 2005, p. 125).

However, all these quotes are taken verbatim from the original version of The Doctor and the Soul written in the years before deportation. As is well known, Frankl had completed The Doctor and the Soul in 1941. He had hid a copy of the manuscript in his coat, and succeeded in keeping his coat (and the manuscript) throughout the years in Theresienstadt, but had to discard of the original after his arrival in Auschwitz in the disinfection chamber (the prisoners had to take off their clothes during this procedure, and their clothes were taken away—along with it, the coat with the manuscript). Yet the other two copies of the manuscript of the original version of The Doctor and the Soul remained in Vienna: one was smuggled into the prison cell of Hubert Gsur, Frankl’s childhood- and mountaineering friend, in 1942, as the latter was waiting for the enforcement of his death sentence for “subversion of the Wehrmacht and attempted coup.” It is unclear what happened to Hubert Gsur’s copy; it was probably thrown away or destroyed by the prison administration after Gsur was murdered. The other copy was in custody of Paul Polak who was hiding in Vienna during the war. Polak returned it to Frankl after the latter’s return to Vienna in August 1945. This copy is still in the archives (and has recently been published alongside the post-war edition in the Edition of the Collected Works of Viktor Frankl (2011)), which is why we know that each single paragraph of this

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book which Pytell interprets as Frankl’s “obvious” post-war attempt to “detach” himself from his Holocaust experience was in fact written years before Frankl and his family were deported. Pytell’s analysis of the notion of guilt and remorse as discussed in The Doctor and the Soul is equally limited to passages taken from the original version written before deportation. Pytell thus conflates all these citations on the false premise that they originated in Frankl’s last camp and were then written down in more detail after liberation. And he therefore draws the equally false conclusion that “Frankl’s peculiarly optimistic reaction undoubtedly skirted the question of guilt and was ‘expedient’” (Pytell, 2005, p.  129). Again—it would have paid to inquire at the Viktor Frankl Archives, or at least make himself familiar with Frankl’s biography and bibliography. What I find particularly troublesome about these comments of Pytell’s is not just that they are manifestly wrong, but also the assertiveness with which he presents his interpretations: not a shadow of doubt can be detected when he “undoubtedly,” “unequivocally,” “clearly” makes assertions that in no way correspond to the actual data and facts.1 Yet these would be relatively harmless errors overall if they did not serve Pytell as a basis for the final allegation that Frankl’s thinking and viewpoint indicate “that those that died in the camp were not strong enough to endure its conditions” (Pytell, 2005, p. 136) or that Frankl argued that “the dead were to blame for the futility of their death” (Pytell, 2005, p. 138). It is not sure whether Pytell means to say that Frankl really held that his father, mother, brother, and first wife (all lost their lives in the camps—his father in Theresienstadt, his mother and brother in Auschwitz, his wife in Bergen-Belsen) were indeed “simply not strong enough to endure the conditions of the concentration camps” or that “they were to blame for the futility of their death.” Contrast Pytell’s morbidly misleading “summary” of what Frankl allegedly felt and thought about the victims of the concentration camps with Frankl’s speech “in memoriam,” which he gave at the Gesellschaft der Ärzte in Wien [College of Physicians in Vienna], on March 25, 1949: Our dead colleagues […] have proven to us that man has the power to remain human, even under the most adverse circumstances – a real human and a real physician. However, what honors those who proved themselves, should be a lesson to us, should teach us what man is and what he can be. The best have not returned. The best have not survived. (Frankl, 1949)

1  Note, though, that after I informed Pytell that he did get the dates of these quotes wrong, he added a half-hearted caveat in the English editon of his book: “Since he was reworking a book conceived before the war, it may be that these positions originated before his trauma” (Pytell, 2015, p. 112). Yet in the discussion immediately following this caveat, Pytell again treats the citations as if Frankl conceived of them only after 1945. And since I showed Pytell the original pages with these citations, written (and dated) in 1941, i.e. before Frankl’s deportation, the untypically cautious wording (“it may be”) is somewhat unusual – unless, of course, Pytell decided that tangible evidence does not count as much as his preconceived notions of what Frankl had to write in order to follow Pytell’s very own narrative.

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Finally, Pytell’s philosophical Holocaust discussion reaches yet another low point when he claims—without a shred of evidence or argument—that Frankl’s “empty heroics seemed to reflect the worldview of the National Socialists” (Pytell, 2005, p. 137); and in the English edition of his book, added the very peculiar remark that Frankl found a way […] to conceptualize his Holocaust experience as meaningful, and not only that, but as a repository of meaningful experiences that were eternal (Pytell, 2015, p. 113).

The notion that Frankl, who lost almost his entire family and friends in the Shoah, or any other survivor of the Shoah, would perceive his or her “Holocaust experience” as meaningful, or even saw it as “a repository of eternally meaningful experience,” is, frankly, beyond comment. But since there is literally nothing of this sort to be found in any of Frankl’s texts, speeches, or writings, it is difficult to even construe Pytell’s horrid idea as based on a misunderstanding. Q: In closing our conversation, let’s talk about Pytell’s discussion of Frankl’s rejection of collective guilt. A: Yes, but by now it probably will not come as a surprise that Pytell once again disagrees with Frankl. To be more precise, Pytell does not just find little, but nothing whatsoever to recommend Frankl’s position. However, at least in this case, Pytell is not alone in reproaching Frankl for having been “too conciliatory.” Except that Pytell does Frankl more injustice than others, who approach the subject in a more considered manner, when he writes that Frankl “took on the part of the conciliator […] only once his professional status was restored” (Pytell, 2005, p. 153). For this is—once again—simply not true, and there are plenty of sources to prove why and how Pytell again misrepresents historical facts. As his earliest writings and lectures from 1945 onwards show, Frankl expressed his opposition against the thesis of collective guilt immediately after his liberation and return to Vienna and even before his first books were written or published or even before he was hired as a medical doctor in the Poliklinik Vienna—in fact, even before he was assigned a flat to stay in, i.e. long before his professional status was restored.2 And he maintained this view throughout his life. At any rate, considering that several interesting rebuttals of Frankl’s position would have been available to Pytell, his discussion of the question of collective guilt is disappointingly flat. An example: As a psychiatrist and psychologist, Frankl was aware of the fallacy of the hypothesis that the “German or Austrian nature” was particularly predisposed to the Holocaust. Frankl argued that—supported by findings such as the Milgram Experiment or Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment and a large body of more recent social psychological research on conformity, obedience and violence—that “any country is inherently capable of the committing crime of the Holocaust.” Pytell replies somewhat petulantly, by saying, “in principle, yes, but in 2  In the first few weeks after his return to Vienna, Frankl first lived in the Jewish retirement home in Malzgasse and subsequently moved to a small room in the basement of a bed-and-breakfast (Pension Auer) in the ninth district.

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actual fact it was Germany, with Austrian support” (Pytell, 2005, p. 155). That is a somewhat awkward response, for it is precisely the starting point from which the question arises whether these two countries are particularly predestined for such developments, or not. Frank’s objective, however, was to warn other nations already before the beginnings of comparable developments, and that is only possible if one points out to them that they are not a priori immune. The sober message of psychological research rather is that nobody is immune; and that believing that only Germans and Austrians are capable of totalitarianism and genocide therefore is in fact outright dangerous. The message here was—and still is—that there is no special German or Austrian soul which predisposes Germans or Austrians for dictatorship, racism and anti-­ Semitism, organized mass murder, and war crimes; very unfortunately, the problem is neither German nor Austrian nature, but human nature. Thus when Allan Janik pointed out that that Pytell “seems neither willing nor capable of pursuing such a serious intellectual inquiry” (Janik, 2007), this may apply especially to his discussion of the question of collective guilt and responsibility. For example, in the English version of his book, Pytell writes—again in apparent ignorance of several core texts—that […] people have collective responsibility. But in 1946, Frankl began with the statement that there is no collective guilt, never asking whether we are responsible (Pytell, 2015, p. 150).

Pytell seemingly missed the many texts in which Frankl discusses the distinction between individual guilt and collective responsibility and liability. A brief glance at these texts shows that Frankl not only was not “never asking whether we are responsible”; he rather discusses this question at length throughout his books, lectures, and articles. Ignorance of these discussions and Frankl’s differentiation between collective guilt and collective responsibility is of course somewhat incongruous if one is, like Pytell, also quoting Frankl’s texts on collective guilt, written as early as in 1945 and 1946. For in the very texts which Pytell quotes, Frankl exhaustively discusses this very differentiation and strongly advocates collective liability, including the liability of Austrians and Germans that were not actively involved in the savagery of National Socialism: That we can meaningfully talk of collective responsibility and liability, even where the individual has no personal culpability, can be explained as follows: If, say, I have to undergo an appendectomy – and I surely can’t be held responsible for my appendicitis – the fact that I am beset by an appendicitis is not “owed” to me; and yet, I will “owe” a fee to the surgeon who has operated on me, and I will be “liable” for its payment. Well, that’s how a nation is liable in its entirety, and thus every individual within this nation, since he had to be freed from tyranny and terror by other nations, since other freedom-­loving peoples had to sacrifice their youth on the battlefields in order to liberate all these innocent individuals from their government – because they were themselves not capable of doing so, since they, as they themselves keep reaffirming, were too powerless. Even if I am personally innocent of the crimes the nation I belong to has committed in the world, I thus share liability for the consequences of these crimes (Frankl, 1946a).

Beyond that, it is difficult to say whether Pytell really fails to understand Frankl’s arguments or whether he for one reason or the other does not want to understand

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them. Pytell writes, for instance, that Frankl held the view that there was no actual guilt during the Nazi regime, because “everyone was just an insignificant cog, caught in the totalitarian system” (Pytell, 2015, p. 150). The problem is that this “summary” of Frankl’s position contradicts practically everything Frankl has ever said about the problem of guilt in general and the problem of guilt in National Socialism specifically—after all, Frankl expressly linked his argument against collective guilt to the unconditional recognition of individual guilt and responsibility. Pytell, on the other hand, claims that Frankl “apportioned responsibility for National Socialism and the Holocaust to the meaningless ‘system’—and not the individuals involved” (Pytell, 2005, p. 155). Had Pytell read and understood Frankl’s thoughts on this subject, he would have known that this is nothing short of an inversion of Frankl’s perspective. Frankl never tired of saying that the decisions of the individual were the decisive element.3 In a puzzling second step, however, Pytell manages to turn this criticism on its head twice over (into a kind of hypothesis of collective innocence) when he suddenly asserts that “Frankl claimed a position of moral superiority for himself and the Austrian people” (Pytell, 2005, p. 161). Pytell offers neither supporting argument nor source for this (there is none). And neither does he say how to reconcile this assertion with Frankl’s following remarks about the disproportional violence and cruelty of the Austrian Nazis in comparison to the German Nazis: He who has that sense of tact vis-à-vis us victims shouldn’t talk too much about the suffering the Germans have inflicted on Austria. He had better ask the victims themselves, the Austrians who were in the concentration camps – and they will tell him how the Viennese SS, more than any other SS, were feared! He had better ask the Austrian Jews who had lived through November 10, 1938 in Vienna, only to be told by their “Old Reich” German4 coreligionists how the German SS had acted much less ferociously on the same day, obeying the same orders from on high! (Frankl, 1946b).

There are many comparable passages in Pytell’s discussion of Frankl’s take on collective responsibility, liability, and guilt—so many, in fact, that it seems somewhat futile to enumerate the many minor and major misrepresentations he makes in this matter. I will therefore, somewhat randomly, single out from my list one item that I consider a serious misinterpretation of the actual documented historical and biographical facts. Pytell writes: Frankl obviously felt an obligation to return to Vienna in order to forgive the National Socialists (Pytell, 2005, p. 153; emphasis AB).

Not only does this quote, too, exemplify Pytell’s inadequate knowledge of Frankl’s biography (again, it would have helped to consult the Frankl Archives during Pytell’s stay in Vienna; or at least read some of the biographies written long before Pytell began working on his dissertation). The truth is that Frankl returned to 3  For an overview of Frankl’s lectures and articles between 1946 and 1997, see Frankl, V.E. (2006). Zur Psychologie des Konzentrationslagers. Edition der Gesammelten Werke von Viktor Frankl, Vol. 2. Edited by Alexander Batthyány, Karlheinz Biller and Eugenio Fizzotti. Vienna: Böhlau. 4  “Old Reich” refers to Germany before the annexation of Austria.

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Vienna in order to search for his mother and his first wife, whose fate was not known yet to him (his mother was gassed at Auschwitz, his first wife died as a result of her internment, shortly after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen). After all, Frankl’s letter of resignation, which he submitted at the DP clinic in Bad Wörishofen5 (Bavaria, Germany) at the time to justify his decision to leave his job as a medical doctor to return to Vienna using the next possible illegal transport, has been preserved (see Fig. 8.1). It reads: I am going to Munich, because I am looking for an opportunity to return from there to Vienna, where I must search for my old (cardiac) mother and my young wife; they were both concentration camp inmates, like myself, and we were separated there. So far, I have not had any news of either of them. Of course, I intend to return from Vienna and to bring along my relatives – provided I can find them. In my mind, this is a simple question of conscience, which I am not willing to discuss, because it is all too clear to me. At one point, I have refused to go to the USA, even though I had a visa: I couldn’t abandon my old parents during the war in Europe! So, I stayed with them – otherwise, I wouldn’t have been taken to the concentration camp. I do not regret this decision of mine at all. To me, it was a simple question of responsibility; nobody could absolve me from it. It is the same now: I feel with certainty and determination that I need to go in search of my mother and my wife. And I think you will believe me that

Fig. 8.1 (a, b) 1945: Frankl’s resignation letter to the administration of the Allies’ Hospital for Displace Persons at Bad Wörishofen. Frankl states his intention to return to Vienna as soon as possible in order to search for Elsa and Tilly Frankl. (© Viktor Frankl Archive, Vienna) 5  Viktor Frankl worked at the Bad Wörishofen Hospital for Displaced Persons during the first weeks after his release in 1945.

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Fig. 8.1 (continued) this is dictated solely by my conscience. For it would be selfish for me to continue working here – even if I would rather stay here, where I have an opportunity to work and live in good conditions. (Frankl, 1945/2005b, p. 165)

So much to Pytell’s notion that Frankl returned to Vienna, not in order to search for his family,  relatives and friends, but because he had nothing better to do than to “congratulate himself” for surviving and “to forgive the National Socialists”—the same National Socialists, incidentally, who had murdered his father, his mother, his wife, his unborn child and his brother, as well as the majority of Frankl’s friends and acquaintances. And then, Pytell offers a somewhat mystifying assessment of what Frankl endured during his years in the camps. Pytell writes that Frankl was ultimately “morally purified by the atrocities of Auschwitz” (Pytell, 2005, p. 161; Pytell 2015, p. 154). But from what exactly would an inmate be morally purified in Auschwitz? You do not need to be a psychologist to see the intensely troubling implications of associating the symbolism of Auschwitz’s gas chambers—camouflaged as shower rooms—with the notion of “moral purification.” Pytell also puts forward the following—equally baffling—statement: All survivors of Frankl’s generation incurred some kind of basic guilt (Pytell, 2005, p. 157).

Pytell does not substantiate this view of collective guilt of the surviving victims of the Holocaust. However, knowing the psychological debate around survivor’s syndrome, one can surmise how much such a statement—entirely unprovoked and

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unfounded as it is—can in itself significantly contribute to the re-traumatization of survivors and their descendants, all the more so if it flows from the pen of a “historian” who claims that in Holocaust research, “an honest engagement and reappraisal of the past is therefore a rare accomplishment. Maybe it’s only now, at the end of the 20th century, that we can begin to achieve clarity” (Pytell, 2005, p. 121). As we know, many survivors have developed at times severe depression, which research suggests cannot solely be ascribed to their past traumatic experiences, but also to the no less traumatic subjective and internalized sense of guilt that stems from having survived their friends and family for no apparent reason, or at least for no rationally and consciously discernible reason. While psychiatry is unanimous in its judgment that these are, in the vast majority of cases, irrational, and thus distorted, feelings of guilt, their effect on the psychological health and quality of life of the sufferer is all the more severe (Niederland, 1980; Grünberg, 2000; Müller-­ Hohagen, 2014). To give it a human face—to demonstrate what psychological damage a careless remark such as “All survivors of Frankl’s generation had incurred some kind of basic guilt” can cause, and how enormously unfair it is—I shall cite a specific case example of survivor’s syndrome: At the time of his examination, he gave a wretched impression, as if prematurely aged. His speech was toneless, almost inaudible, while the account he gave of his past was fragmented and marked by increasing bewilderment and despondency. […] His fundamental attitude is described as predominantly adynamic depressive, his emotional state as depressive, disheartened, restless, suspicious. He complains of […] persistent insomnia; when he did fall asleep, it was only to be jolted out of his sleep, moaning. He suffers from feelings of guilt: “I should not have stayed alive. I should have died, like my parents and sisters, my wife and my little child …” (Zimmer, 1975).

As briefly mentioned in the Introduction, perhaps the mindset behind Pytell’s verdict that “all survivors of Frankl’s generation incurred some kind of basic guilt” is also at work when Pytell liberally accuses a number of Frankl’s contemporaries of having sympathies with or tendencies towards National Socialism, or at least fascism. He considers Alfred Adler “authoritarian” (Pytell, 2005, p.  39), writes that Charlotte Bühler was anti-Semitic, but certainly conservative, “and, some say, fascistic” (Pytell, 2015, 50), though Pytell does not tell who these “some” are (and not a word about the fact that Charlotte and her husband Karl Bühler were forced to leave Nazi Austria; and never mind that Charlotte Bühler was Jewish herself and, even before the “Anschluss,” a victim of the rampant anti-Semitism of the Austrian Ständestaat). And even Max Weber—he died in 1920—is put under general suspicion by Pytell: for Pytell briefly discusses the idea that, Weber, if only he had lived long enough, might have had at least some “sympathy for the National Socialists’ ideas” (Pytell, 2005, p. 93). Unfortunately, in each of these cases, arguments for these allegations are missing, and arguments or biographical data which speak against these allegations are mostly ignored. The basic premise of Pytell’s accusations thus seems to be: not only did “all survivors of Frankl’s generation have to bear some kind of basic guilt,” but even those who died before the Nazi takeover are pre-emptively put under general suspicion of sympathy with National Socialism had they only lived long enough to show their true colors. Certainly, the judge who

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decides that you are guilty even if you were never anywhere near the crime scene, or even a victim of the crime, and who insists that you are guilty unless you can prove your innocence, but at the same time will not accept any evidence which speaks for your innocence, is not only harsh judge; it is also an irrational and unfair judge. But if the survivors of the Holocaust all incurred some basic guilt, and if those who were no longer alive during the Holocaust (or had to leave Austria because of the Nazis) were somehow suspicious or likely would be Nazis according to Pytell, was there anyone not declared guilty by Pytell? Insofar as there is anyone Pytell is prepared not to assign basic guilt to, then it must be those who did not survive the concentration camps. But even this does not hold, because, according to Pytell’s argument, Rabbi Regina Jonas and Karel Fleischmann died as collaborators in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, since they had previously had helped trying to comfort their fellow inmates at Theresienstadt together with Frankl (Figs. 8.2 and 8.3). Q: In closing this discussion, what are your general conclusions? A: I hope that I could show what we are dealing with: a “historian” (or, as Pytell prefers to call himself, an “intellectual historian”) who feels profound revulsion against the object of his investigation. His research, as well as his intellectual grasp of Central European Jewry, or the European history of psychology and psychiatry, and his treatment of the sources available to him are, as other reviewers also point out, severely inadequate  and often manipulative. In addition, he has next to no knowledge concerning the work and biography of Viktor Frankl (partly because he cannot read the original texts of which only a tiny fraction has been translated into English), and his discussion of logotherapy and its history bears witness to a remarkable incapacity or unwillingness to comprehend even relatively simple concepts (even if translated into English)—not to mention the more complex aspects of logotherapy and existential analysis. Furthermore, he shows little or no respect for the victims and survivors of the Holocaust—for he came to the conclusion that ‘every one’ of them bears, in Pytell’s judgement, “some kind of basic guilt”; although he leaves this unusual assertion of the collective guilt of the surviving victims entirely unsubstantiated. He also maintains that the victims’ memory must be faulty—and that until now, “an honest engagement and reappraisal of the past is a rare accomplishment,” which seems to be a rather broad and excessive belittling of the holocaust literature. Against this background, Pytell develops a narrative according to which Viktor Frankl was sympathetic towards the authoritarian corporate state—based on rather tenuous arguments: the first being that Frankl was irritated by the crowds that cheered Hitler and the Nazis after the “Anschluss,” remarking that such behaviors would have been unthinkable under Schuschnigg; the second, that Frankl, as an employee of a public hospital, was automatically registered as a member of the Vaterländische Front. However, the actual facts tell the opposite story: it so happens that Pytell missed the fact that Frankl was, at just this moment, active in the Vereinigung jüdischer Ärzte in Wien, an organization that was emphatically inimical towards the corporate

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Fig. 8.2  Discharge certificate from the liberated camp Dachau, with a confirmation that Frankl arrived there from Auschwitz concentration camp on 27 October 1944. (© Viktor Frankl Archive, Vienna)

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Fig. 8.3  Viktor Frankl’s concentration camp inmates questionnaire, July 1945

state, and had published in its Mitteilungsblatt. At the same time, Frankl gave lectures at the Viennese chapter of the Zionist Organization, which, again, is hardly compatible with any kind of proximity to the corporate state, let alone the nascent National Socialist movement in Austria. Pytell also falsely  claims that Frankl was involved in the Viennese Göring Institute, whereas the lectures frequented by Frankl were—that much the sources tell—held at another organization, still largely led and attended by Jewish colleagues: the Austrian chapter of the International Medical Society for Psychotherapy, as opposed to the German Göring Institute. For this, too, we have—contrary to Pytell—written proof (see Figs. 4.1 and 4.2): Firstly, the minutes of the inaugural assembly of the Austrian chapter of the International Society (Austrian Society for Psychotherapy and Mental Hygiene) in 1936; secondly, the minutes of the seminars that Frankl attended at Austrian chapter of the International Society; thirdly, a letter, dated March 1938, in which Göring suggests the establishment of a Viennese Göring Institute which further indicates that no such institute existed in 1936; and, fourthly, Göring’s own account that the Austrian branch of his Berlin Göring Institute was only founded after the “Anschluss” and that the “bastion of Jewish psychiatry in Vienna finally fell” in March 1938, and finally, the membership list of the Göring

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Institute Vienna (see Fig. 4.3). The first meeting organized by the Vienna Göring Institute took part in 1939; and of course there were no Jewish attendants. So much for Pytell’s allegation that Frankl wanted to establish his logotherapy at the inexistent Vienna Göring Institute, or “worked for” the latter. Pytell also attempts to politically criminalize Frankl’s publications of that period, which only works to the extent that he misrepresents both their content, their intention, and the journals they were published in—as they all contain strong criticism of the Reich German psychotherapy movement and were published, among others, in a journal that took an emphatically anti-Nazi stance and was a mouthpiece of the Christian resistance at that time. But Pytell ignores all of this and instead suggests that the mere fact that Frankl engaged with the relationship between ideology and psychotherapy indicated that he did, after all, want to cozy up to the Reich German psychotherapy movement “one way or another”: “he therefore accepted it.” Why and how a young Jewish psychiatrist, who is active in the Zionist movement, writes against NS psychotherapy and publishes in anti-National Socialist publications should “still somehow” seek the proximity of just that movement, Pytell does not say—presumably because there would be no other answer than Pytell’s narrative simply does not add up. Furthermore, Pytell claims Alfred Mauczka, Frankl’s medical director at the Steinhof hospital was a Parteianwärter of the NSDAP—without offering a shred of evidence for this—false—allegation; it rather seems as if Pytell confused Mauczka’s application to the Reich Chamber of Physicians with an application to the NSDAP (see Wolfang Neugebauer’s and Peter Schwarz’s Comment in Appendix). And he claims that Frankl had invented the attempts to protect and rescue, together with Pötzl, potential euthanasia victims, consequently only mentioning them after Pötzl’s death in 1962—and again, the sources tell a different story: Frankl issued his first report on these attempts as early as in autumn 1945 (see Fig. 5.1; see also the archive of the Vienna town hall; after all, this attestation, as well as other correspondence on the matter, was addressed to the then mayor, Theodor Körner; and see also Lisa Geldner’s and Franziska Danneberg-Löw’s reports). And he falsely claims that Wolfgang Neugebauer, in an “interview” which was, it turns out, not an interview, but a brief chat, said that Frankl “never sabotaged euthanasia”; for what really happened during the meeting between Pytell and Neugebauer, see the Foreword of this book. And as far as the accusation that Frankl conducted “experiments on Jewish patients on behalf of the National Socialists” is concerned, or—an alternative interpretation, suggested by Pytell—that Frankl had broken the resistance against the National Socialists, is concerned: Pytell invokes Kwiet’s statement that suicide could, in certain cases, be interpreted as resistance. Pytell does not mention, however, that Kwiet merely discusses this thesis (and far more cautiously than Pytell imputes) and concedes that suicide is much too multi-layered, multi-causal, and complex an issue to be subject to simplistic narratives. Pytell also ignores the fact that Frankl had already been involved in suicide prevention as a young Adlerian in Red Vienna; and secondly, that the emergency room at the Rothschild Hospital admitted and treated these patients at all, and that some of these patients were transferred to the neurological ward by the staff of the emergency room. Pytell thus

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insinuates that the entire Rothschild Hospital, as the last merely tolerated hospital of the Vienna Israelite Community, was an institution sympathetic to National Socialism and attempted to break the Jewish resistance and encouraged, or authorized, “experimental research” on Jewish patients on behalf of the Nazis. Yet he provides no evidence for any of these accusations. And he ignores the fact that there exists at least one testimony of one of these rescued suicide patients who additionally confirmed that she was protected by the hospital staff from being deported to the concentration camp (through false diagnoses and a prolonged stay of several months after she recovered) or that other reports confirm that Frankl helped hiding mentally handicapped Jewish children in order to rescue them from the T 4 euthanasia program. Once again, Pytell’s allegations squarely contradict the historical facts—including the fact that the SS regularly carried out raids on the Rothschild Hospital and that a majority of the hospital’s staff (and patients) were eventually deported to the camps and murdered there. As far as the clinical treatment of severe barbiturate poisoning that Frankl developed is concerned, Pytell does not mention the fact that the intracisternal application of Pervitin was in fact therapeutically effective and, at a minimum, delayed the onset of respiratory arrest in these patients. Pytell also claims that Frankl tried to hide his therapeutic attempts in later accounts, and only talked about them, swearing his listeners to secrecy, in the 1980s. Yet Pytell did not find the public records or for whatever reason preferred not to mention them which prove that Frankl even gave lectures about this work as early as 1947, and from then on, sporadically in his well-­ attended public biographical lectures both in Europe and in the USA. Concerning Frankl’s own detention in the concentration camps, Pytell maintains in all seriousness that Frankl looked forward to his own deportation, as it were, in order to test “paradoxical intention,” as well as study the limits and aesthetics of fear—so much so, we are led to believe, that he was prepared to accept, en passant, the deportation and murder of most of his family, including his elderly parents, his wife, and his brother. And Pytell claims that he “discovered and exposed” the fact that Frankl was in Auschwitz for a few days—a “discovery” which needed as much research as merely listening to or reading one of perhaps a few dozen lectures and documents written by Frankl over the years, beginning in 1946. Pytell also ignores the introductory chapter of Man’s Search for Meaning according to which most of the events described in the book took place in the “smaller, lesser known camps,” and not in the large and (in)famous camps (such as Auschwitz). And yet, Frankl was, according to Pytell, “morally purified” at Auschwitz, although he provides no explanation as to what exactly one might be morally purified from at Auschwitz, nor how the Nazi torturers were instrumental in moral purification in general. All this is hardly worth getting into again. No more than Pytell’s insinuation that Regina Jonas and Karel Fleischmann and the other volunteers of the clandestine support group at Theresienstadt had actually acted and died as collaborators of the Nazis. What’s more, Pytell’s discussion of Frankl’s views on collective guilt, responsibility and liability is characterized by remarkable ignorance of Frankl’s actual position—for example, when Pytell maintains that Frankl never mentioned ­

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collective responsibility and liability, whereas this was one of the central topics of his lectures and publications on the subject. And Pytell’s assertion, entirely devoid of any factual basis, that Frankl postulated a morally superior position of Austria vis-à-vis the Reich Germans is contradicted by source material wherein Frankl emphasizes how much more brutally than its German counterpart the Austrian SS acted against the Jewish population (Frankl, 1946b). However, the question remains: where do we stand today, 15 years after the first publication of the German version of Pytell’s dissertation (and a couple of article and the publication of the expanded dissertation on which the German book is based)? I do not know whether Pytell’s work will convince many readers. I am more inclined to think that it is those who have not read Pytell’s texts, but have heard about it from others, that may be led to believe that Frankl was fascinated by fascism, sought the proximity of the National Socialist psychotherapy movement, conducted “experiments with Jews” on behalf of the National Socialists, etc. But I am afraid it is only reasonable to concede at least one success to Pytell. Albeit it is not an intellectual or academic one (after all, all of this is about Pytell’s only book—in fact, his dissertation—of his entire scientific career to date and, except for four of five minor articles on other topics, his entire “scientific” oeuvre is based on the misrepresentations and allegations discussed in his dissertation), and certainly not a personal or ethically laudable one. Pytell’s allegations are “out there” now—and are occasionally repeated quite uncritically by a few colleagues which have been misled by Pytell’s misrepresentations. I only fear that with each repetition,6 some of his allegations will become part of “canon” despite the fact that they are patently and provably false. But it remains to be seen how those authors who were misled by Pytell’s falsifications of history or his publisher or his university will react to the present research results—whether for example Berghahn Books will keep Pytell’s book in its program, notwithstanding the fact that it is, as we have seen, and as Prof. Wolfgang Neugebauer, one of the leading experts on the Austrian Holocaust, writes, “full of factual mistakes and manipulations,” proving to be the work of an author who demonstrates remarkable “ignorance of scientific literature and archive materials”— quite apart from the moral dimension of Pytell’s hypothesis of the basic guilt of all surviving victims of the Holocaust, or the false allegation that Alfred Mauczka, the former head of Steinhof, was a candidate for NSDAP membership. The same—and particularly the question of scientific responsibility—applies to those researchers and authors who have taken up, quoted and disseminated Pytell’s distorted version of Frankl’s biography in their own works.7 Their number may not 6  For example, Pytell’s allegations are presented as historical “facts” in: Chung, M. C., & Hyland, M. E. (2011). History and Philosophy of Psychology. John Wiley, 249f.; Hyland, M. (2019). A History of Psychology in Ten Questions. Routledge, p. 196; Woody, W. D., & Viney, W. (2017). A History of Psychology: The Emergence of Science and Applications. Taylor & Francis, p. 438. 7  See, for example: Corbett, L. (2011). The sacred Cauldron: Psychotherapy as a Spiritual Practice. Chiron Publications; Barratt, B. B. (2016). Radical psychoanalysis: An essay on Free-Associative praxis. London: Routledge, 128; Zeidman, L. A., & Kondziella, D. (2012). Neuroscience in Nazi Europe part III: victims of the Third Reich. Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences 39(6), 729-746; Halpin, R. W. (2019). Jewish Doctors and the Holocaust: The Anatomy of Survival in

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be great. But some have nonetheless taken Pytell’s allegations at face value—three textbooks on the history of psychology (namely, by Chung and Hyland [2011], Hyland [2019], and Woody and Viney [2017])—wrongly state, based on Pytell’s publications, that Frankl ingratiated himself with the Nazis, collaborated with or worked at the Göring Institute, undertook experiments with Jews at a “Nazi hospital,” or deceived his readers about the actual internment in Auschwitz, etc. I would like to underline that it would be equally wrong to in any way blame these authors—for who would have suspected or expected to be so thoroughly misled, and who would have thought that peer-reviewed journals, or an otherwise reputable publishing house such as Berghahn, would publish works “full of factual mistakes and manipulations” (as Wolfgang Neugebauer puts it in the foreword of this book) such as Pytell’s? It can be hoped, however, that now, after this clarification and the reappraisal of actual source material and in view of the weight of the evidence both from historical sources and the proven falsification of historical facts through Pytell, some kind of rectification can occur, and these wrong accusations are corrected for the sake of scientific integrity and research ethics. Especially in our time of rampant fake news, we know how easily one can become an instrument of dissemination of such misinformation—sometimes knowingly, and sometimes unknowingly.8 It is the academic’s scientific responsibility to counteract this and, at the very least, not to become an element of this system of misinformation. As Housman put it in his famous essay on history: Accuracy is a duty, not a virtue. On the other hand, it is encouraging to note an increasing number of critical voices that call out Pytell’s “work” for what it really is. To close on a personal positive note: What began with a brief confrontation with the Holocaust denier Theodore O’Keefe—which, as I have mentioned before, is what first drew my attention to Pytell—and finally led me to engage with Pytell himself, took me on an instructive journey into the early history of logotherapy and existential analysis, which yielded many previously unknown details about Frankl’s life and thinking of that time—such as his affiliation with the Jewish Medical Association, or his involvement with the Zionist Organization at a time when such an involvement was nothing short of clear and exposed opposition to the Christian Social, and later the National Socialist movement; or his publication of harsh criticism of Reich German psychotherapy in an explicitly anti-Nazi journal, as well as his association with the resistance fighter Franzi Danneberg-Löw to thwart the euthanasia program.

Auschwitz. Munich: Walter de Gruyter, p. 200f.; Kaplan, R. M. (2016). Holocaust Deception in Australia: A review. Forensic Research and Criminology International Journal 2(5), 00070; Adamczyk, A. L. (2005). Frankl, Bettelheim and the camps. Journal of Genocide Research 7(1), p. 67-84. 8  For a discussion the problem of misrepresentation and misinformation in the academic context, see: Scheufele, D.  A., & Krause, N.  M. (2019). Science Audiences, Misinformation, and Fake News. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(16), p. 7662–7669.

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All this—and other research results pointing in the same direction, which space constraints prevent us from detailing at this juncture—shows that scientifically sound, source-based research into the intellectual history of logotherapy and Frankl’s early biography is worthwhile and interesting. It is of course a pity that Pytell has missed that opportunity so thoroughly. But I do hope that a more serious academic discourse regarding these questions and source material can now take root, a discourse which does justice to the density and wealth of available sources, and possibly other, hitherto untapped findings. And it would be worth a separate discourse to examine the history of the reception of Pytell’s work, and more generally, protection mechanisms against fraud and misrepresentation in historical research.9 I hope that this book, and the research it is based on, can contribute to this discourse.

References Adamczyk, A.  L. (2005). Frankl, Bettelheim and the camps. Journal of Genocide Research 7(1), 67–84. Barratt, B.  B. (2016). Radical psychoanalysis: An essay on Free-Associativepraxis. London: Routledge. Chung, M. C., & Hyland, M. E. (2011). History and philosophy of psychology. John Wiley. Corbett, L. (2011). The sacred Cauldron: Psychotherapy as a Spiritual Practice.Chiron Publications. Frankl, V.  E. (1946a). Die Existenzanalyse und die Probleme der Zeit. 28. Dezember 1946. In Vortrag am französisch-österreichischen Hochschultreffen in St. Christoph am Arlberg. Frankl, V.  E. (1946b). Zum letzten Mal: Das verhängte Fenster. Wien: Viktor-FranklSchriftenarchiv. In Frankl, V.E. (2006). Zur Psychologie des Konzentrationslagers. Edition der Gesammelten Werke von Viktor Frankl, Vol. 2. Edited by Alexander Batthyány, Karlheinz Biller and Eugenio Fizzotti. Böhlau. Frankl, V. E. (1949). In memoriam. Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, 61, 226. Frankl, V.  E. (2005a). Ärztliche Seelsorge. Grundlagen der Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Deuticke. Frankl, V. E. (2005b). In A. Batthyány, K. Biller, & E. Fizzotti (Eds.), … trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen und ausgewählte Briefe 1945-1949. Edition der Gesammelten Werke von Viktor Frankl (Vol. 1). Böhlau. Frankl, V. E. (2005c). Frühe Schriften 1923 – 1942. Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Gabriele Vesely-Frankl. Maudrich. Frankl, V.  E. (2011). Ärztliche Seelsorge. Grundlagen der Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Letztauflage. Stand: 2005. In A. Batthyány, K. Biller, & E. Fizzotti (Eds.), Viktor E. Frankl. Gesammelte Werke Band 4. Ärztliche Seelsorge. Grundlagen der Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Und frühe Texte zu einer Sinnorientierten Psychotherapie. Böhlau. Grünberg, K. (2000). Zur Tradierung des Traumas der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung. Psyche, 54(9–10), 1002. Halpin, R. W. (2019). Jewish Doctors and the Holocaust: The Anatomy of Survival inAuschwitz. Munich: Walter de Gruyter. Hyland, M. (2019). A history of psychology in ten questions. Routledge.

9  See the discussion in: Wiener, J. (2007). Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower. New York: New Press.

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Janik, A. (2007). Viktor Frankl. Review. Central European History, 2, 3. Kaplan, R.  M. (2016). Holocaust Deception in Australia: A review. Forensic Research and Criminology International Journal 2(5). Müller-Hohagen, J. (2014). Verleugnet, verdrängt, verschwiegen: Seelische Nachwirkungen der NS-Zeit und Wege zu ihrer Überwindung. Kösel Verlag. Niederland, W. G. (1980). Folgen der Verfolgung: Das Überlebenden-Syndrom. Seelenmord. Pytell, T. (2005). Viktor Frankl – Ende eines Mythos? Studienverlag. Pytell, T. (2015). Viktor Frankl’s search for meaning: An emblematic 20th-century life (Vol. 23). Berghahn Books. Woody, W. D., & Viney, W. (2017). A history of psychology: The emergence of science and applications. Taylor & Francis. Zeidman, L.  A., & Kondziella, D. (2012). Neuroscience in NaziEurope part III: victims of the Third Reich. Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences 39(6), 729–746. Zimmer, K. (1975). Ich hätte nicht überleben sollen. Zeit, 44, 1975.

Afterword1

Why Frankl? Why Frankl? Well, why not Frankl? Viktor E. Frankl, M.D., Ph.D. lived in Europe during one of the most tumultuous times in human history, the twentieth century. Born in 1905 in Vienna, Austria, he became an accomplished medical doctor before the ‘Anschluss’ (annexation) of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938. Before that year he had already published articles in Sigmund Freud’s International Journal of Psychoanalysis (1924) as well as in Alfred Adler’s International Journal of Individual Psychology (1925). By 1938, Frankl had already formulated his unique therapeutic method he called “logotherapy,” a therapy designed to help clients find meaning in life. By 1938, he had formulated a strategy to assist the youth of Austria and Europe by creating youth counseling centers to support them when life became difficult, and for some, hopeless. By 1938, Viktor Frankl had already lectured about logotherapy and existential analysis in several countries throughout Europe. By the time of the ‘Anschluss’ in 1938, Frankl had established himself as a good and helpful physician to suicidal patients in the Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital in Vienna. Then, in 1938, life changed dramatically for Viktor Frankl and his family, just as it did for Jews all over Europe. While Frankl’s early mentors, Freud and Adler managed to escape the Nazi horrors by immigrating to London and New York, respectively, Frankl remained behind in Vienna to support his aging parents, even though he attained a visa to immigrate to the USA. Frankl was only allowed to work as a  Dr. William Evans is a Professor of Psychology at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He  also serves on  the  International Advisory Board in  the  Science Department of  the  Viktor Frankl Institute in  Vienna, Austria. Dr. Evans served as  a  Chaplain in  the  United States Air Force and Air National Guard for over 25 years. He is co-author of several books including Thriving! Inspiring Leadership and Becoming a Community Counselor. His passion is teaching and researching life meaning through service and service-learning, and he often leads students to discover meaning as they serve among the “least of these” in Virginia and beyond. 1

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medical doctor at the Jewish Rothschild Hospital during this time. At great risk to his own life, he was able to save mentally ill Jewish patients in Vienna from the Nazi euthanasia program. Viktor Frankl married Tilly Grosser in 1941. The Nazis made the young couple abort their first child. No Jews in Vienna were allowed to have children at that time. In 1942, Frankl was arrested by the Nazis and transported, along with his wife and parents, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp just north of Prague. His father died there. Frankl himself was later transported by the Nazis to Auschwitz, where he survived the infamous “selections” upon arrival. Unknown to him at the time, his mother was “selected” immediately for the gas chamber and soon afterward, the crematorium. He did not know the fate of his wife, Tilly. Tilly, while also a survivor of the initial “selection” at Auschwitz, was later transferred to Bergen-­ Belsen, which she also survived until liberation in 1945, but by then, with the horrendous conditions in the camp, her health had deteriorated and she died before she and Viktor could be reunited. Frankl was soon transferred from Auschwitz to forced labor in two subcamps of Dachau, Türkheim, and Kaufering. Weak and malnourished, he almost succumbed to typhoid fever, but somehow survived by motivating himself to rewrite a manuscript the Nazis had confiscated at Auschwitz. He also fought to stay alive so that he might one day be reunited to his wife and mother. This was not to be, as he later discovered after his own liberation in 1945 and his return to Vienna after the war. Frankl soon found out that his brother and his brother’s wife had also been murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz. He later described this time in his life, right after liberation, as his most desperate hour. One wonders how he survived this, too. Frankl understood suffering and loss, and he dedicated his life to helping suffering humanity find meaning and hope. Viktor Frankl often referred in his writings to a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche, “he who has a why can bear almost any how.” Frankl’s “why” in the Nazi camps had been to see his wife and mother again. This “why” was soon crushed after his liberation with the news of their deaths. His other “why,” a book to finish, kept him going for a time. The Doctor and the Soul was published in 1946. He needed another “why.” A second book emerged—his experiences in the concentration camps. He wrote it anonymously at first, then later, he courageously placed his name on the book he became best known for, Man’s Search for Meaning. Still, he needed another “why” for the meaning of his existence. To his surprise and amazement, life offered him another chance at love when he met Eleonore Schwindt. They were married in 1947, and together they parented their daughter, Gabrielle. Elly reignited Viktor’s “why.” For the next 50  years, they worked together, traveled together, and constructed manuscript after manuscript of articles, books, and lectures Frankl would share with the world. Later he would say that “the meaning of my life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.” Frankl’s “why” also became the “why” of countless people he helped find meaning in life, both during his lifetime and afterward. Viktor E. Frankl died of heart failure in 1997, yet his legacy continues. People all over the world can attest to his assistance in finding their own “why” in their search for meaning in life. I am one of them.

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Why Pytell? Why? “Why” is a difficult question to answer regarding the motivation of any human being. Why do people do what they do, and in the way they do it? That is one of the core components of much psychological research—which is in many ways a quest to understand human behavior. Psychological science provides many clues, and human motivational research continues to provide clues to better understand human behavior. Perhaps the best one can offer here is an opportunity for the reader to find an answer to their own question “why.” I have already discussed earlier how Viktor Frankl searched for a “why” regarding the meaning of his own life, and how his life work then assisted others in their quest to answer for themselves their own “why.” To know Frankl’s “why” offers us a substantial clue regarding who he was, the work he did, and the life he lived. Why Frankl? Why does one write about him or produce a documentary of his life and work? In most cases it is because of the inspiration one has received from his teaching, or his writings, or from knowing him personally. Biographers like Haddon Klingberg wrote of Frankl from this perspective. He knew Frankl personally and professionally and was invited by Viktor and Elly Frankl to tell their story. Don’s book When Life Calls Out to Us (2001) displayed an amazing, richly detailed biography of Viktor and Elly Frankl’s life story. This same sense of inspiration is also why Alex Vesely directed and produced a documentary on Frankl’s life and work, titled Viktor & I (2010). Alex also knew Viktor personally, as Viktor Frankl was his grandfather. Alex literally grew up at the feet of Viktor Frankl. This film is a beautiful documentary of Viktor Frankl’s life and work, told not only by his grandson, but by many others who knew him well and found his life and work to be inspirational. Why, then, did Timothy Pytell (2015) decide to write an account of Viktor Frankl’s life and work? Pytell’s ultimate motivation remains a mystery, but it needs to be noted that he is one of only a few to openly criticize Frankl and to accuse him unjustly of activities that there is no supporting evidence for. This is quite surprising for an academic historian like Pytell. In fact, what Prof. Alexander Batthyány has provided here is a long-needed English response to Pytell’s methodology and accusations regarding Viktor Frankl. Please note also that this response to Pytell’s book on Frankl was never intended as an attack on Timothy Pytell as a person. Batthyany does, however, respond to his unusual methodology as a historian and his unsubstantiated accusations against Frankl; and this with substantial historical and verifiable evidence. I found Pytell’s writing on Frankl to be obviously misleading at best, and cleverly deceptive at worst. Batthyány’s reply sets the record straight. This is extremely important at this time in our history when anyone can write anything about anyone and find a potential audience for their ideas, no matter how scientifically or historically inaccurate. Some have called such writing “historical fiction.” In such writing there is just enough history to seem credible, with a lot of embellishment that leaves the reader to guess what is true and what is simply the author’s addition by design, whim or

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imagination. Some might even call such writing “fabricated news.” Again, there may be some facts recorded along with a lot of commentary including an agenda either hidden or clear. It is important to note what is truly historical regarding Pytell’s presentation of Viktor Frankl’s life and work, and what Pytell simply “made up” to suit his ultimate goal, which clearly was an attempt to discredit Viktor Frankl, both unjustly, and without merit. It is important to know the truth about such an important and influential historical figure. Those who really want to know the real Viktor E. Frankl now have a lucid, candid presentation of documented facts. From Batthyány’s response to Pytell, the reader can clearly see immediately many of the issues and concerns with Pytell’s methodology in his attempt to write an “intellectual biography” of Viktor Frankl (Pytell, 2015, p. 12). Key among the concerns addressed by Batthyany in this section is Pytell’s obvious agenda to discredit Frankl, with statements like, “I felt contempt for Frankl” (p. 165); and, “I felt disgust for Frankl” (p. 165). Interestingly, Pytell does not state this biased agenda clearly until late in his book’s Epilogue. No one would expect anyone to read the Epilogue before the main content; thus, Pytell cleverly attempts to disguise his loathing of Viktor Frankl until the end of his book. I find this quite misleading for the reader, and very dishonest. One would not expect such prejudice from a historian writing an “intellectual biography.” Also noteworthy is Pytell’s lack of desire to meet with Frankl personally when he had opportunity to do so, stating that he and Frankl “would not have had much to say to each other” (p. 165). Would any honest attempt to write an objective biography of anyone not include an interview with the subject of interest, especially if one had the opportunity to do so? This obvious avoidance properly raises suspicion, in my view, of Pytell’s entire work. Equally troubling is Pytell’s lack of interest in the Viktor Frankl Archives in Vienna, Austria, even though he did much of his research and writing in Vienna. One must wonder why any historical biographer would avoid such an opportunity to explore the archives of his subject directly. It appears very obvious to me, then, that Pytell has an anti-Frankl agenda and he will not let such obvious research opportunities deter him from completing it. While some careless errors may have been made in oversight, it appears clear to me that Pytell is obviously on a mission to discredit Frankl. Many of the “facts” he uses in this attempt are false or misrepresented, however, as anyone with an open mind can clearly see in Batthyány’s response to Pytell’s accusations of Frankl in Part II. I am convinced Pytell sought to create a “strawman” version of Viktor Frankl that he believed he could easily destroy. This is certainly not the case, and one must read Batthyány’s reply in its entirety to see clearly why this must not be allowed to pass for a historical biography. I often carefully noted how Pytell moved from a known fact about Frankl, to Pytell’s own interpretation of Frankl’s behavior and motives, using phrases like “this could mean,” “perhaps Frankl …;” or “it seems.” At times he even precedes a known fact about Frankl with his own negative interpretations and innuendos. Such carelessness, or rather, outright loathing of the person you are writing about is not the typical standard for an “intellectual biography.” The obvious

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disdain Pytell has for Frankl has finally been addressed. This is the essence of the second section of Batthyány’s reply. I am so grateful for Batthyány’s honest work to address Pytell’s accusations of Viktor Frankl, a man we now know he detests.

Why Me? I often tell my Thanatology class when we are studying the experience of grief and loss, that “time heals all wounds; but time still takes time.” While it may have taken some time to respond to Timothy Pytell’s expressed intent to bring Viktor Frankl’s character into question, eventually time will tell, and with time, corrective healing may take place. I believe Viktor Frankl has suffered enough already: loss of his early career aspirations due to the Nazi takeover of Austria; loss of his unborn child due to Nazi abortion policies toward the Jews; loss of his home and possessions in his beloved Vienna when he is sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp; loss of his father in Theresienstadt; loss of his prized book manuscript in Auschwitz; loss of his mother and brother in Auschwitz; loss of his wife in Bergen-Belsen; loss of hope to be reunited to his family and friends who perished at the hands of the evil Nazi empire. Who would dare to question Frankl’s choices during this time, especially without justification and facts? In his autobiography, Recollections, Viktor Frankl wrote specifically about judging people for their choices long after the facts of history have been settled. He was addressing each person’s struggle to suffer with courage and dignity in the midst of the overwhelming horrors so many human beings endured during the Holocaust, and the choices some people made during that difficult time in history. Frankl stated, “such heroism for self-actualization may be demanded by one person only—oneself. It is fully as problematic for anyone to insist that someone else should have gone to the concentration camp rather than give in to the Nazis. Even if this is so, such a demand can be made only by those who themselves showed such bravery, not by those who had fled to safety abroad. It is easy to judge people by hindsight (p. 80).” Such words seem almost prophetic in nature when one considers the many unfair judgments Pytell lays on Viktor Frankl. What would Pytell have done differently, even heroically, if he, rather than Frankl, had suffered so much under the evil Nazi empire? We will never know, for it was Frankl who endured and survived, not Pytell. His “biography” of Viktor Frankl was not written with precision or care. Pytell’s character assassination of Frankl was not only unfair treatment, it was dishonest and misleading—a far cry from being an “intellectual biography.” So, where does one go from here? It is my sincere hope here at the end of this book that the reader has a much clearer understanding of the real Viktor E. Frankl— his life, his work, his motivation, and his “why” regarding the meaning of his life. This Batthyany has accomplished through historical facts and substantiated evidence that anyone could certainly verify through comprehensive reading and research. Batthyany has also noted, with all due respect to Timothy Pytell as an

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academic historian, clearly stated findings regarding both his faulty methodology and his false accusations against Frankl. Batthyany has provided, with great capability, historical evidence and verifiable facts to support his response to Pytell. My “why” for contributing to this book has simply been to support Dr. Batthyány’s desire to clarify and set the record straight regarding the facts of Frankl’s life, work, and legacy. In the process, I have found renewed respect and admiration for Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, as well as a deeper longing for seeking meaning in my own life, while also hoping to help others find meaning in theirs. My sincere hope for you, the reader, is that you found some additional understanding of your own “why” in life. Best wishes to all as you pursue a meaningful life.

Appendix

 omment on the Question of NSDAP Membership C of the Head of the Viennese Psychiatric Hospital Steinhof, Dr. Alfred Mauczka1,2 In his publications on Viktor Frankl, the historian Dr. Timothy Pytell establishes a link between Frankl and the head of the Viennese psychiatric hospital “Am Steinhof,” Dr. Alfred Mauczka by relating Frankl’s work at the “Suicide Pavilion” (pavilion 3) of the asylum in the years 1933–1937 to the “Nazi” Dr. Mauczka, who allegedly became an “applicant” for NSDAP membership in 1940. The latter claim will be examined below. The working group for medical crimes of the Nazi era of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW), including its director, Dr. Wolfgang Neugebauer and his colleagues, Mag. Dr. Peter Schwarz und Mag. Dr. Herwig Czech, has been systematically searching for NS links of Austrian physicians since the 1980s, and scoured archives at home and abroad to that end. This initially involved mainly enquiries to the former Berlin Document Centre (under US administration), now Federal Archive, Berlin, where the central NSDAP index, as well as relevant archive material of other NS organizations was kept; after 1991, through a Berlin colleague (Dr. Erika Schwarz), we also searched former GDR archives,

1  Wolfgang Neugebauer, Dr. phil., historian, 1983–2004 head of  the  Documentation Centre of  Austrian Resistance (DÖW), since 1995 honorary professor of  Contemporary History at the University of Vienna; numerous publications on the resistance and NS euthanasia. 2  Peter Schwarz, Mag. et Dr. phil., historian, 1995–2012 research fellow at  the  Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, since 2017 research associate of the Verein zur wissenschaftlichen Aufarbeitung der Zeitgeschichte [Association for  the  Scientific Reappraisal of  Contemporary History] (c/o Department of Contemporary History of the University of Vienna), numerous publications on NS euthanasia and eugenics.

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especially the now available Stasi files (now Federal Archive, Berlin), for physicians involved in NS euthanasia and NS forced sterilization. This research unearthed, inter alia, the documents that eventually spawned the court case against the euthanasia doctor Heinrich Gross. All these documents passed through the hands of the head of DÖW and were always on display in his office. As no documents confirming Alfred Mauczka’s membership in the NSDAP or other NS structures were found, Neugebauer in 1997 described Mauczka as “one of the few non-Nazis” in this environment, in a lecture he gave at a symposium on the history of psychiatry in Vienna. The following documents are relevant to the examination of this question: • In an official questionnaire, filled in—under oath—22. April 1940, Dr. Mauczka did not declare membership in the NSDAP, or any other NS group, but merely indicated that he had been an “applicant” for admission to the Reich Chamber of Physicians since 1939. He likely would have disclosed an application for membership in the NSDAP (“applicant”), because this would have entailed professional advantages. • In a “political assessment” of the NSDAP Vienna regional administration [“Gauleitung”], dated 4 March 1941, a scathing report on Dr. Mauczka was issued, and his demotion from the position of administrative director of the institution was requested. • Mauczka’s promotion to the position of medical director was turned down by the City of Vienna on 10 May 1941, because he “could not be relied upon to unconditionally espouse the National Socialist state at all times.” • On 20 November 1940, the Reichsführer SS (Himmler) refused to sign off on a trip to Hungary Mauczka wanted to take in connection with a treatment for his granddaughter. • In a survey of all employees of the Viennese asylum “Am Steinhof” with a previous NS affiliation, mandated by the City of Vienna, municipal department 17, office for mental hospitals, carried out on 17 June 1946, no NS affiliation appears for Dr. Alfred Mauczka. • In a questionnaire dated 14 July 1945, Dr. Mauczka denied (under oath and on pain of dismissal, as well as legal proceedings) any affiliation with the NSDAP or its offshoots, only stating an “affiliate membership” of the SS in 1938/1939. • In an undated list (probably compiled in 1945/1946) of all NS-affiliated physicians in Vienna Dr. Mauczka does appear, but without membership in the NSDAP; he is characterized as an “applicant” to the Reich Chamber of Physicians and “associate member of the SS.” • No document from the NS era refers to Mauczka as “Parteigenosse” [party member] or “Pg.”—which was commonly noted in case of an official’s membership, or prospective membership, in the NSDAP. • Neither in the collections of the former BDC nor in those of the former Stasi archive in the Berlin Federal Archive, are there any documents to corroborate Mauczka’s membership in the NSDAP.

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In view of these facts, the allegation, made by Dr. Timothy Pytell in several publications, that Alfred Mauczka became an “applicant” to NSDAP membership on 15 July 1940 is plainly and simply wrong. It is apparent that Dr. Pytell either did not linguistically understand or intentionally manipulated, the document of the DÖW he quotes in this regard (“Mauczka’s Nazi Party file no. 002208184, Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstands”). This document is in fact a copy of the Dr. Alfred Mauczka’s index card at the Reich Chamber of Physicians, which the DÖW received from the US Berlin Document Center in September 1987. Dated 15 April 1940, it identifies Mauczka as an “applicant” to the Reich Chamber of Physicians, but not as a current or prospective member of the NSDAP. Dr. Timothy Pytell’s attempted portrayal of the long-time director of “Steinhof,” Dr. Alfred Mauczka, as an actual or prospective member of the NSDAP lacks any factual basis and is obviously intended to associate the Jew, anti-Nazi and concentration camp inmate Dr. Viktor Frankl with National Socialism in this far-fetched and downright absurd manner.

Index

A Abeln, R., 30, 31 Ach, N., 34 Adamczyk, A.L., 111 Adler, A., 20, 31, 33, 96, 104, 115 Aichhorn, A., 7, 12, 18, 34, 39, 40 Aichhorn, T., 7, 18, 34, 39, 40 Allers, R., 33, 37, 41, 44 Ash, M.G., 7, 34, 39 B Baeck, L., 76–78 Barratt, B.B., 110 Batthyány, A., 6, 11, 15, 16, 101, 117–119 Berkeley, G., 76 Berze, J., 41 Biller, K.H., 101 Binswanger, L., 33, 96 Bischof, G., 8 Bleuler, E., 29 Brenner, I., 9 Bühler, C., 104 C Carus, G., 30, 31 Chung, M.C., 110, 111 Cocks, G., 33 Corbett, L., 110 Corbett, T., 9 Corrigan, T., 68, 69 Crook, J., 65 Czech, H., 121

D Danneberg-Löw, F., 7, 59, 66, 108, 111 Das, A.K., 26 Diemath, H.E., 66 Dönhardt, A., 66 E Earnst, K.S., 30 Ebneth, R., 49 Ehrlich, J., 42 Eliasberg, W., 33, 37, 41 Ellenberger, H., 31 Engstrom, E.J., 9 Ertl, K.A., 32 Evans, W., 115 F Fischer, B., 33 Fizzotti, E., 101 Fleischmann, K., 76, 78, 79, 105, 109 Frankl, V.E., 3–22, 25–27, 29–51, 55–73, 75–79, 83–93, 95–112, 115–123 Freud, S., 12, 20, 30, 33, 40, 62, 96, 115 G Gabriel, E., 86, 116 Goebbels, J., 73 Goeschel, C., 62, 63 Goldstein, K., 33 Göring, M.H., 7, 34, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46, 50, 67, 107

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126 Graber, G.H., 30 Groddeck, G., 33 Gross, H., 122 Grosser, T. (Frankl, T.), 116 Grünbaum, O., 42 Grünberg, K., 104 Gsur, H., 69, 91, 97 H Haeberlin, A., 50, 67 Hahn, D., 33 Halpin, R.W., 110 Hegel, G.H.W., 31 Hehlmann, W., 31 Heidegger, M., 9, 96 Himmler, H., 122 Hirschfeld, M., 34 Hitler, A., 10, 56, 105 Hyland, M.E., 110, 111 I Isserlin, M., 33 J Janik, A., 9, 70, 100 Jekelius, E., 32 Johnson, E.M., 65 Jonas, R., 76, 78, 79, 105, 109 K Kadar, M.A., 30 Kaplan, R.M., 111 Kauders, A.D., 9 Kauders, O., 41 Kondziella, D., 110 Köppe, W., 30 Krause, N.M., 111 Kretschmer, E., 33 Kring, A.M., 30 Kronfeld, A., 33 Krüger, J., 66 Kuhlmann-Hodick, P., 30 Kwiet, K., 62, 63, 68, 108 L Langer, L., 4 Lanier, W.A., 65 Laun, A., 49 Leibniz, G., 31

Lewin, K., 34 Loewy, H., 37, 41 Loosen, P.T., 30 M Maaz, B., 30 Maltschnig, E., 8 Mann, T., 31 Marcuse, M., 33 Martin, M., 9 Mauczka, A., 6, 12, 31, 32, 37, 108, 110, 121–123 Mentel, C., 3 Merrill, R.M., 65 Milgram, S., 99 Moll, A., 34 Morgenthaler, M., 34 Müller-Hohagen, J., 104 Müller-Hohagen, M., 104 Munk, E., 76 N Neugebauer, W., 5, 6, 11, 12, 32, 58, 59, 67, 70, 108, 110, 111, 121, 122 Niederland, W.G., 104 Nietzsche, F., 116 Northoff, H., 63 Nowotny, K., 37, 41 O O’Keefe, T., 3, 4, 6, 111 P Paulozzi, L.J., 65 Plasser, F., 8 Polak, P., 97 Porucznik, C.A., 65 Pötzl, O., 56–59, 66, 67, 75, 108 R Ranschburg, P., 34 Rattner, J., 30 Reich, D., 30, 32, 34, 37, 49, 51, 60, 62, 66, 102, 108, 110, 111, 122, 123 Reich, W., 6, 30, 32–34, 37, 49, 51, 60, 62, 66, 102, 108, 110, 111, 122, 123 Rolfs, R.T., 65 Rosenkranz, H., 62 Rothländer, C., 7, 34, 39

Index S Salem, J.E., 30 Sauer, B., 65 Scheler, M., 9, 10, 29, 96 Scheufele, D.A., 111 Schopenhauer, A., 31 Schuschnigg, K.V., 25–27, 105 Schwarz, E., 121 Schwarz, O., 32, 33, 41, 69 Schwarz, P., 6, 12, 108 Shepard, D.A., 30 Simmel, E., 33 Sommer, R., 33 Spitzer, G., 30 Steinhardt, B., 59 Stekel, W., 33 Stern, E., 4, 5 Stransky, E., 41 V Vesely, A., 117 Vesely-Frankl, G., 12 Viney, W., 110, 111

127 von Gebsattel, V.E., 33 von Goethe, J.W., 30, 31 von Hartmann, E., 15, 31 von Hattingberg, H., 33 von Hildebrand, D., 49, 67 von Humboldt, A., 30 von Kogerer, H., 39 von Weizsäcker, V., 33 W Weber, M., 104 Wellisch, E., 37, 41 Wexberg, E., 21, 33 Wiener, J., 7, 34, 39, 112 Woody, W.D., 110, 111 Z Zeidman, L.A., 110 Zimbardo, P.G., 99 Zimmer, K., 104 zur Verth, C., 66