I Loved My Wife

The photos in ‘I loved my wife’ were taken on the site of 16 Austrian psychiatric institutions. Tens of thousands of children were murdered in these institutions during the Second World War. Killed because they were considered to be incurably ill. The costs of keeping them alive were too high for society, an opinion that was reinforced with films and other propaganda material directed against people who had nothing to offer society. Euphemisms for the murders were mercy death and euthanasia. Provisions for the institutions and care for the victims of hereditary illnesses were seen as working against natural selection.