Alexandra Pohlmeier is a film maker and in this presentation she shows her film about the life of Dorothea Buck (1917-2019) an award winning sculptor and author who between 1936 and 1959 had five psychotic breaks in five psychiatric hospitals. She spent most of the rest of her life trying to figure out the reason for this.
In 1931 Dorothea attended a special conference on eugenics, sterilisation and euthanasia where the church institutions made the decision that all patients who couldn’t regain their full capacity should only be kept alive in a humane way. Also, the capacity to work and be productive was a crucial means of deciding whether a person should be sterilised or actually live or die. A little later the compulsory sterilisation Act came into force …
Response to Alexandra Pohlmeier’s presentation from fellow artists.
