#10009. “Don’t forget about self-help” the fight for disability rights in Austria in the 1920s and 1930s

September 2026publication date
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Journal’s subject area:
Social Sciences (all);
Health (social science);
Health Professions (all);
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Abstract:
As an organiser of self-help groups and a political activist, Austrian-Czech Jew Siegfried Braun (1893-1944) co-founded the early social movement oriented towards emancipation and internationality of persons with disabilities in Austria. In the 1920s, he co-founded the First Austrian Cripple Working Group, a self-help organisation. The aim of Braun and his colleagues was to move away from being considered objects of charity–a role imposed by the Austrian welfare policy. The organisation did not only demand compliance with contemporary equal and human rights but also actively organised peer counselling, representation, and regular employment in their own businesses. In the 1930s, Braun maintained an active and reflexive role despite the economically and politically difficult times leading to National Socialism. After 1938, he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and ghetto (today Terez?n Memorial), where he organised educational programmes as a form of resistance, before he was murdered in Auschwitz. Points of interest: This article is about the life of Siegfried Braun. He was a disability rights activist, and he used a wheelchair. He was born in Moravia in 1893. Siegfried Braun co-founded the First Austrian Cripple Working Group in 1926. He was an advocate for ‘independent living’ and ‘work not pity’. In 1943, the Nazis deported Braun to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and ghetto because he was Jewish. In the concentration camp and ghetto, he organised resistance lectures and helped other persons. He was murdered in Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944.
Keywords:
disability history; disability rights movement; Holocaust; independent living

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