Julius von Wagner-Jauregg

Julius Wagner-Jauregg (7 March 1857 – 27 September 1940) was an Austrian physician, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1927. His Nobel award was "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of malaria inoculation in the treatment of dementia paralytica". Even though his first wife was Jewish, later in life he supported Nazism, and became anti-Semitic and advocate of eugenics, which degraded his public recognition.

Towards his last days Wagner-Jauregg was influenced by Hitler's German nationalism, and became an anti-Semite and sympathizer of Nazism. Documentary evidence indicates that he supported the Nazi party shortly after the invasion of Austria in 1938 by Germany. However, a denazification commission in Austria found that his application for NSDAP membership had been refused "...on grounds of race", as his first wife was Jewish.

Wagner-Jauregg advocated a racial hygiene ideology called eugenics, influencing students such as Alexander Pilcz, who went on to author a standard handbook on racial psychiatry critical of Jews for being prone to mental illness.

He was also an advocate of forced sterilization of the mentally ill and criminal, having endorsed the concept in 1935 while a member of the Austrian Anthropological Society.

He was President of the Austrian League for Racial Regeneration and Heredity, which advocated sterilization for those of inferior genetics.

Foto - https://www.muis.ee/museaalview/4097197