Austrian neurology was scientifically a highly innovative field in the clinic, laboratory as well as conceptually drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis and wider cultural movements. A key question is how Austrian neurology was impacted by National Socialism. Whereas German medical organizations and specialisms have reviewed their past conduct under National Socialism, this has happened only to a very limited extent in Austria. Medical specialisms rapidly imposed Gleichschaltung after the Anschluss, excluding their Jewish and politically undesirable members, and supporting the imposition of Nazi racial and health policies. How the situation was in neurology remains largely uninvestigated.

Paul Weindling is Research Professor in History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University. He has been on advisory commissions concerning National Socialism for the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft and the precursor Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, 1999–2004; on the Robert Koch Institute, 2005–2009; on the German Association of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Neurology (DGPPN), 2010–2012. He is co-president of the commission of the University of Strasbourg to research the medical faculty of the Reich University Straßburg between 1941 and 1944. He recently began a major collaborative project to research the life histories of patients killed for research by Institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. He holds the Anneliese Maier Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and is member of the Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences and Honorary member of the DGPPN. He is a trustee of CARA, the Council for At-risk Academics.