Sublime

Asperger’s assessment of these girls was in the context of his role as director of the Curative Education Clinic in Vienna during the Third Reich. Shockingly, there is strong evidence that this clinic was a core part of the regime’s child ‘euthanasia’ programme.

Marie Souvestre, the founder and headmistress, was the daughter of the French philosopher and novelist Émile Souvestre. A committed feminist, she believed passionately in educating women to think for themselves, to challenge accepted wisdom, and to assert themselves. These were subversive doctrines to patriarchal Victorians, yet Allenwood succeeded

Fritz, Harro, Ernst, and Hellmuth were deemed worthy of intense therapeutic support and education, whereas both Elfriede and Margarete were deemed ineducable, of no social worth, unlikely to ever successfully perform ‘domestic duties’ or form ‘personal relationships’. So they were sent off to Am Spiegelgrund. The ‘ineducable’ Elfriede wrote letters