Suicide and suicide prevention in Vienna from 1938 to 1945

Beginning with the inception of suicide prevention in interwar Vienna, the paper illustrates how the high number of counselling centres contrasted with a discourse of selection. Despite the fact that suicide rates proved extremely high, suicide prevention declined in importance between 1934 and 1945. Suicide was increasingly attributed to the weak and the inferior. The massive threat to Vienna's Jewish population and the high suicide rates among Viennese Jews are also outlined. The paper concludes with a synopsis of V.E. Frankl's activities in the field of suicide prevention at the Rothschild Hospital as well as the concentration camp in Theresienstadt.