2020: Development of Teaching Materials accompanying the Touring Exhibition "Asocial" – Exclusion Yesterday and Today

Implementation: Mag. Dr. Brigitte Halbmayr (project management)
Mag. Dr. Helga Amesberger
Funded by: National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism
Future Fund of the Republic of Austria
Women’s Office of Linz
Completed in: November 2020

The travelling exhibition “asozial" – Ausgrenzung gestern und heute ("asocial" – exclusion yesterday and today) premiered in spring 2019. On a total of 14 panels, it addresses the persecution of women as "asocial" under National Socialism and the continuities of stigmatization and marginalization processes in the post-war period up to the present day.

Stigmatization and disciplining have a centuries-old history, which might have culminated in their radicalization by National Socialism, but did not reach its end point there. By focusing on the persecution of women, female history becomes more tangible, about which – also in the context of concentration camps – there is still much less knowledge than about the male (normative) worlds of experience.

Texts and documents in the exhibition relate exclusively to Austrian sources and the (political) situation in Austria at the time of National Socialism and at the present time. Thus, their use is very suitable for teaching in Austrian schools. The prepared materials are intended to support the integration of the exhibition into the classroom. For this purpose, seven thematic booklets and two workshop concepts were developed.

  • Booklet 1: Exclusion yesterday and today. A tour of the exhibition
  • Booklet 2: Index card of the “Arbeitsanstalt Am Steinhof” labour institution. Working with perpetrator documents
  • Booklet 3: Equal – Unequal – More unequal. How girls and women are expected to be
  • Booklet 4: "Those who don't work shouldn't eat." The principle of performance
  • Booklet 5: In the beginning there is defamation. Mechanisms of exclusion
  • Booklet 6: Youth opposition against the lock-step/cadence
  • Booklet 7: Locking away – locking in – locking out. Places of persecution
  • Workshop 1: The stigma of "asocial" and its persistence. A concept for secondary school I, 4th class
  • Workshop 2: What is supposed to be “asocial” about this person? Biographies-WS for secondary school II, 7th class

The thematic booklets (1 to 7) offer introductory information for teachers, an explanation of the learning objective and a list of the working methods used, as well as naming the central documents (info page). This is followed by a description of the proposed course of one or two teaching units (50 or 100 minutes). Then, the worksheets created for the thematic booklet – usually, they cover one or two central documents on the exhibition’s topic – are presented.

The two workshop concepts are each designed for four teaching units (200 minutes) and are intended for the first and second secondary level, respectively. Their structure largely follows that of the thematic booklets. All teaching materials can be easily combined or reduced to dealing with individual documents. They are also suitable for the elective course history in secondary schools or as starting materials for a pre-scientific paper.

The booklets and workshop concepts are designed to help pose questions about the documents (and consequently about the topic itself), offer new perspectives on them and thus facilitate a multi-layered discussion. There are no "right" or "wrong" solutions, but offers for dealing with a challenging topic.

The teaching materials are freely accessible via the website ÖsterreicherInnen im KZ Ravensbrück (Austrians in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp): https://www.ravensbrueckerinnen.at/?page_id=7085