Otto Perl

Otto Perl (born October 19, 1882, Saxony, Germany—died October 17, 1951, Wittenberg) was a German author and cofounder of the Selbsthilfebund der Körperbehinderten (Self-Help Alliance of the Physically Handicapped, or Otto Perl Alliance; 1919–31), the first emancipatory self-help organization representing the interests of the physically disabled in Germany.

Perl grew up with nine siblings in simple rural circumstances. At age 13 he began to suffer from a stiffening of joints, and three years later, after the death of his mother, who was his primary caregiver, he began an odyssey through German invalid institutions. In 1919 he became part of a small circle of founders of the Self-Help Alliance of the Physically Handicapped in Berlin. From 1922 to 1924 he was acting deputy of that first organization. During that time he studied philosophy and economics at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (later Humboldt-Universität, or Humboldt University).

In 1926, after moving to an institute in Nürnberg, Perl published Krüppeltum und Gesellschaft im Wandel der Zeit (Crippledom and Society Through the Ages). He fought against institutionalization and demanded the right for self-determination. He limited his demand for education and job training to the “mentally normal” but physically handicapped person, in contrast to the “mentally handicapped,” and, already in 1926, he showed a thinking that alarmingly coincided with the Nazi ideology for selective care.

In 1946, a year after the end of the National Socialist regime, Perl described himself as a victim of Nazi encroachments. Yet in 1935 he had demanded the separation of the “mentally sound” and the “mentally degenerate” and unmistakably applauded the National Socialists for their measures to control hereditary biological problems.