Pedagogies of Hope and the Leuven DisABILITY Film Festival

by Pieter Verstraete

Introduction

The discourse surrounding hope in pedagogy has evolved over decades, shaping the way educators conceptualize their roles in fostering optimism and agency among students. This paper explores the seminal ideas of Dutch historian of education Lea Dasberg (1930-2018) and her pedagogical philosophy of hope, juxtaposing them with contemporary applications such as the Leuven DisABILITY Film Festival. By contextualizing historical perspectives on education within broader social narratives, this discussion underscores the relevance of hope as a central tenet of both educational theory and practical initiatives aimed at fostering inclusivity.

Lea Dasberg and the Pedagogy of Hope

Lea Dasberg was a historian of education whose works significantly influenced pedagogical discourse in the Netherlands and beyond. Born into a Jewish family and physically disabled, Dasberg’s intellectual pursuits were shaped by her experiences and the socio-political climate of her time. Her seminal work, Grootbrengen door kleinhouden (1976), challenged prevailing educational paradigms, arguing that the prevailing tendency to restrict children's growth through overprotection inhibited their willingness to become adults. Dasberg’s academic prominence was cemented with her appointment as a professor at the University of Amsterdam in 1980. Her inaugural lecture, Tribute to Hope, addressed key challenges in pedagogical thinking as the 20th century approached its end. She argued that education should be forward-looking, yet cautioned against the perils of millennial pessimism, which, she believed, undermined constructive pedagogical efforts.

The Crisis of Future-Oriented Pedagogy

Dasberg identified several factors impeding a hopeful pedagogy. She critiqued the rising influence of apocalyptic thinking, particularly within science fiction and futurology, which often portrayed bleak and dystopian futures. She also scrutinized anti-authoritarian educational movements that advocated for absolute freedom, cautioning that such approaches could lead to nihilism rather than empowerment.

Drawing parallels between the anxieties surrounding the year 2000 and those of the year 1000, Dasberg highlighted the cyclical nature of millennial fear. She argued that such fears often resulted in educational stagnation, where young people were conditioned to expect decline rather than progress. To counteract this, she proposed a pedagogy rooted in hope, emphasizing the educator’s responsibility not only to translate knowledge but also to embody optimism.

Figure 1: Cover of the inaugural lecture “Pedagogy in the shadow of the year 2000: Tribute to hope” by Lea Dasberg (1980) © Private collection Pieter Verstraete

Constitutive Elements of Dasberg’s Pedagogy of Hope

Dasberg’s theory of hope-based pedagogy was built on three foundational principles: historical consciousness and action, the importance of the other (world), and the social rather than the individual.

1. Historical Consciousness and Action

Dasberg argued that teaching history should extend beyond rote memorization of facts and figures. For her, historical education had to be an active process that inspired students to engage critically with the past. She emphasized Holocaust education as an example, advocating for pedagogical methods that encouraged students to internalize lessons from history and apply them to contemporary issues. Her own initiatives, such as educational reforms in the Negev Desert and school exhibitions on the Holocaust, exemplified this belief.

2. The Importance of the Other (World)

One of Dasberg’s major critiques of contemporary education was its excessive preoccupation with the self. She observed that children’s literature often reinforced this trend by encouraging self-identification rather than exposure to new perspectives. Instead, she proposed that children’s books should introduce young readers to unfamiliar worlds, challenging them to engage with experiences beyond their immediate reality. By doing so, she believed that education could cultivate empathy, curiosity, and a broader worldview.

3. The Social Instead of the Individual

Dasberg was critical of the growing emphasis on individualized education, which she viewed as counterproductive to the development of a collective future. She lamented the Romantic turn in pedagogy, which had shifted educational goals from social utopias envisioned during the Enlightenment to inward-focused psychological development. In her view, an overemphasis on individual needs constrained children’s potential by defining them according to their current attributes rather than their future possibilities.

The Leuven DisABILITY Film Festival: A Contemporary Application of Hope-Based Pedagogy

 

Figure 2: DisABILITY Filmfestival Team 2025 © DisABILITY Filmfestival

Origins and Philosophy

Founded in 2011, the Leuven DisABILITY Film Festival embodies some of Dasberg’s pedagogical principles. With an overarching goal of fostering inclusivity, the festival provides a space for meaningful dialogue between individuals with and without disabilities. The initiative emerged from a recognition of the need to challenge stereotypes and promote nuanced understandings of disability.

At its core, the festival seeks to achieve three primary objectives: ensuring an enjoyable experience for all participants, creating spaces for people to interact beyond identity-based divisions, and facilitating discussions that move away from simplistic representations of disability. By adopting a pedagogical approach akin to Dasberg’s, the festival prioritizes engagement and dialogue over prescriptive narratives.

Activities and Accessibility

The festival’s programming includes a range of activities designed to maximize inclusivity and engagement. These include:

•    Film screenings with contextual introductions and discussions
•    A film café to encourage informal dialogue
•    A short film competition
•    Public lectures in collaboration with the Leuven Centre for Health Humanities
•    Targeted screenings for primary and secondary schools

To ensure accessibility, the festival incorporates multiple accommodations, including sign language interpretation, step-by-step guidance for individuals with autism, and audiodescription for visually impaired attendees. Additionally, all promotional materials undergo review by city accessibility councils to enhance inclusivity.

Budget and Organizational Structure

Operating as a non-profit organization, the festival relies on a mix of ticket sales, subsidies, and volunteer contributions. With an annual budget of approximately 30,000 euros, it maintains financial viability through a combination of public funding and grassroots support. A core team of six individuals coordinates the efforts of around 30 volunteers, ensuring the smooth execution of the festival’s diverse activities.
 

The Intersection of the DisABILITY Film Festival and the Pedagogy of Hope

Togetherness Instead of Identity Politics

One of the key distinctions of the Leuven DisABILITY Film Festival is its emphasis on togetherness rather than rigid identity politics. While many disability-focused film initiatives center on promoting specific identity-based narratives, the festival fosters a space for collective engagement. This approach aligns closely with Dasberg’s critique of self-preoccupation in educational settings. Rather than reinforcing predetermined identities, the festival encourages participants to engage in open-ended discussions that transcend personal backgrounds.

 Figure 3: Performance by Sofie Cox during the 13th edition of the Leuven DisABILITY Filmfestival © DisABILITY Filmfestival

 

Cracks Instead of Concrete Alternatives

Another crucial aspect of the festival’s philosophy is its commitment to highlighting possibilities rather than prescribing rigid alternatives. Rather than simply countering stereotypes with fixed representations, the festival seeks to expose the constructed nature of social narratives surrounding disability. This approach resonates with Dasberg’s belief in historical consciousness and action. By demonstrating that existing social structures are products of historical developments, the festival empowers new generations to envision alternative futures.

Conclusion

The pedagogy of hope, as envisioned by Lea Dasberg, remains highly relevant in contemporary educational and social initiatives. By advocating for historical consciousness, engagement with the unfamiliar, and a shift from individualism to collective responsibility, Dasberg provided a blueprint for an education system that fosters optimism and agency. The Leuven DisABILITY Film Festival exemplifies the application of these principles in practice, offering a dynamic space for dialogue and transformation.

In a world often dominated by narratives of crisis and decline, initiatives that embrace hope-based pedagogy are more crucial than ever. Whether in the classroom or in cultural spaces such as film festivals, fostering a pedagogy of hope can serve as a powerful antidote to despair, inspiring individuals to actively shape a more inclusive and optimistic future.

Pieter Verstraete is a senior lecturer in the history of education at KU Leuven (Belgium). He is one of the founders of the annual Leuven DisABILITY filmfestival.

 

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References 

 

Recommended citation:  Pieter Verstraete (2025): Pedagogies of Hope and the Leuven DisABILITY Film Festival. In: Public Disability Histoy 10 (2025) 5.

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Perspectives on the Historical Approach to Dementia

by Laura Dietl

Dementia has, thus far, received little attention in Disability History. This post aims to change that. Firstly, dementia’s relevance to the field will be established, along with key methodological challenges. A brief historical overview of how dementia has been perceived and dealt with from antiquity to the present will follow.

Why focus on Dementia?

Dementia is an increasingly pressing societal issue as the risk of common forms like Alzheimer's disease rises with age. While dementia is undoubtedly a key challenge for aging societies today and in the future, it has not been given sufficient prominence, either in traditional historiography or in Disability History.
The symptomatic decline of intellectual and mental abilities is a phenomenon that has persisted throughout human history and can be traced through various sources (Karenberg/Förstl 2003). A crucial aspect is how societies have included or excluded individuals with dementia symptoms, positioning the condition between "normality" and "deviance" and constructing it as a "disability" or "illness".

Methodological Challenges

A major challenge is thus the issue of terminology: historical terms for dementia symptoms varied widely, and "dementia" itself has evolved in meaning, complicating historical analysis (Karenberg/Förstl 2003).
Another difficulty lies in the sources. Relevant source material on dementia is scarce and fragmented. Most existing sources are medical-historical, while sociohistorical and personal accounts remain limited.
A key issue is the absence of autobiographical records. Dementia inherently impairs memory and self-expression, making first-hand narratives rare. This absence may reflect both societal marginalization and the nature of the condition itself. Regardless of interpretation, this scarcity presents a fundamental challenge: acknowledging individuals with dementia as historical subjects despite predominantly third-party sources.

"Senectus ipsa morbus est" (Terenz): "That Senescence itself is an Illness"? – Dementia in the Greco-Roman Period

In Greco-Roman antiquity age-related cognitive decline received only periodic attention in philosophical, literary, medical, and legal texts. Dementia symptoms were ambiguously classified, reflecting the debate over whether cognitive decline was simply an inevitable consequence of aging – and thus inherently pathological – or a distinct phenomenon.
Philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Seneca the Younger viewed old age and illness, including dementia, as inseparable (Berchtold/Cotman 1998). Plato's Timaeus ("Dialogue") describes symptoms of age-related forgetfulness resembling modern dementia. In Nomoi ("Laws") he cites a proverb likening cognitive decline in old age to a return to a childlike state. Aristotle similarly addresses age-related cognitive decline in De generatione animalium ("Generation of Animals") and De anima ("On the Soul"), which frame old age as a pathological condition. In contrast, Cicero, in Cato Maior de Senectute ("Cato the Elder on Old Age"), attributes mental decline to moral weakness and rejects a blanket pathologization of aging. Overall, dementia in antiquity was perceived as being somewhere between normal aging and pathological deviation, with the idea of aging as a disease becoming more widely accepted.

Between "Caritas" and Exclusion – Dementia in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

Unlike antiquity, which lacked institutionalized elderly care (Eckart 2022), the emerging medieval hospitals, rooted in Christian caritas, likely served as places of care for dementia patients (Schuhmacher 2018). Despite limited sources, care for individuals with mental and physical disabilities (such as dementia) or chronic illnesses in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period was largely provided by family members and relatives – there is no evidence of collective exclusion of those affected (Frohne/Nuckel/Büttner 2012).
However, literary sources from the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period suggest a negative societal view of old age, often linked to mental decline. In Moriae encomium ("In Praise of Folly”) Erasmus of Rotterdam highlights forgetfulness and the regression of the elderly to childhood, reinforcing ancient stereotypes. Dementia symptoms could carry stigma and even make individuals vulnerable to witch trials (Berchtold/Cotman 1998). Additionally, madhouses which emerged during the Early Modern Period, likely housed those whose symptoms were seen as socially deviant (Schuhmacher 2018).

Developments in the 19th Century

Inspired by psychiatry pioneers like Philippe Pinel, the 19th century saw a gradual shift in the perception of the mentally ill, including dementia patients (Berchtold/Cotman 1998). No longer indiscriminately housed with criminals, they came to be recognized as patients. Enlightenment and humanist ideals promoted more humane treatment, though coercive measures such as starvation diets, cold showers, or straitjackets remained common. (Schuhmacher 2018).
The medical reclassification also spurred research: In Des maladies mentales ("Mental maladies. A treatise on insanity") Jean Étienne Dominique Esquirol provided the first systematic definition of dementia in 1838. However, age-related cognitive decline was still not widely seen as a medical condition, as reflected in the term Altersblödsinn ("senile foolishness") used for this purpose (Karenberg/Förstl 2003).

Who was Auguste Deter? – The Discovery of Alzheimer's Disease

In 1901, 51-year-old Auguste Deter was admitted to the Asylum for the Insane and Epileptic in Frankfurt am Main due to dementia symptoms. There, physician Alois Alzheimer took interest in her case, documenting their conversations in her medical records. After her death in 1906, he examined her brain histologically, identifying the pathology now known as Alzheimer's disease. The term "Alzheimer's disease" was introduced by Emil Kraepelin, a leading psychiatrist of his time, in the eighth edition of his textbook on psychiatry published in 1910. Unlike today's unified concept of dementia and Alzheimer's, a distinction between presenile and senile dementia persisted until the 1960s and 1970s, with Alzheimer's disease classified as the presenile form. However, Alzheimer himself increasingly questioned this dualistic classification as no differences beyond age at onset could be identified between the two forms (Karenberg/Förstl 2003).

Figure 1 - Portrait photo of Auguste, commissioned by Alzheimer from the clinic photographer and added to her medical file, 1901/1902. Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Deter, last accessed on 10th February 2025.

While Alzheimer’s name is widely recognized, Auguste Deter remains largely unknown - a disparity worth addressing. Her recorded statements, such as "I have lost myself," offer rare insights into self-perception in dementia (Maurer/Maurer 1999).
Alzheimer’s discovery did not immediately change dementia treatment but successfully emphasized its biological basis, shifting medical and societal views. This shift is reflected in the gradual transition from the stigmatizing term senile foolishness to Alzheimer’s disease.

Dementia Patients as Victims of Nazi "Euthanasia"

During the era of National Socialism, debates arose over whether senile dementia constituted a krankhafte Erbveranlagung ("hereditary pathological disposition") (Karenberg/Förstl 2003). It is highly likely that individuals with dementia symptoms were among the victims of Nazi “euthanasia”.
Although research on this specific group as victims of persecution and mass murder remains limited, "senile diseases" were listed as selection criteria on reporting forms sent to Heil- und Pflegeanstalten ("sanatoriums and nursing homes") from October 1939 onwards (Cording 2000). The recorded data was reviewed to select “euthanasia” victims, explicitly targeting those with dementia or senile illness, particularly if severely confused or incontinent. Work capacity was crucial; individuals capable only of mechanical tasks (a criterion often met by advanced dementia patients) were marked for “euthanasia”.
However, some restraint was shown in targeting elderly patients. To avoid public unrest, war veterans, elderly individuals, and foreigners were occasionally spared (Schmuhl 1992). Specifically, elderly people who had been socially and economically integrated before developing age-related illnesses were largely excluded. Notably, dementias occurring before old age and conditions with dementia-like symptoms (e.g. progressive paralysis) were not covered by this exemption.
Sample analyses indicate that age-related illnesses accounted for only 1–2% of “euthanasia” cases in certain institutions (Schmuhl 1992). Nonetheless, these numbers confirm that age-related conditions were not categorically exempt.

Growing Societal Interest – From the 1970s to the Present

Since the 1970s, dementia has gained prominence in research and public discourse. In 1980, the first Alzheimer's Association was founded in the USA, followed by similar organizations worldwide, evolving into advocacy groups for patients and families.
In many industrialized Western societies, elderly individuals (with dementia) are increasingly placed in nursing homes, reinforcing a form of (spatial and societal) separation. Even today, old age and dementia remain linked to social exclusion. Moreover, dementia is understood differently across cultures— for example, in Ghana, affected individuals are confined to "witch camps," isolated from their families (further information: https://www.worldpressphoto.org/collection/photo-contest/2023/Lee-Ann-Olwage/1).

Conclusion

Dementia illustrates how concepts of normality, illness, and deviance are shaped by culture and society. The historical approach is not a linear success story but a process of societal negotiation, resulting in varied interpretations. Cognitive decline has been seen as a natural part of aging, a character flaw, or a pathology. History reveals both care and exclusion, stigma and violence, as well as instances of integration and self-empowerment.

Laura Dietl studied German and History at the University of Regensburg and currently works as a teacher.

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References:

Berchtold, N.C./Cotman, C.W. (1998): Evolution in the conceptualization of dementia and Alzheimer´s disease: Greco-Roman period to the 1960s. In: Neurobiology of Aging 19, 173–189.
Cording, Clemens (2000): Die Regensburger Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Karthaus-Prüll im „Dritten Reich“. Eine Studie zur Ge-schichte der Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus. Würzburg: Deutscher Wissenschaftsverlag.
Eckart, Wolfgang (2022): Alt werden und am Alter kranken – Lust und Last des Alterns von der Antike bis in die Neuzeit, in: Ho, Anthony D./Holstein, Thomas W./Häfner, Heinz: Altern: Biologie und Chancen. Alter und Altern individuell, kollektiv und die Folgen (Schriften der Mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Bd. 27). Wiesbaden: Springer Spektrum, 123-140.
Frohne, Bianca/Nuckel, Ivette/Büttner, Jan Ulrich (2012): Ausgegrenzt und abgeschoben? Das Leben körperlich und geistig beeinträchtigter Menschen im Mittelalter. In: bonjour.Geschichte 2, 1–25.
Karenberg, Axel/Förstl, Hans (2003): Geschichte der Demenzen und der Antidementiva. In: Förstl, Hans (Hrsg.) (2003): Anti-dementiva. München/Jena: Urban&Fischer, 5–52.
Maurer, Konrad/Maurer, Ulrike (1999): Alzheimer. Das Leben eines Arztes und die Karriere einer Krankheit. 2. Auflage Mün-chen: Piper.
Schmuhl, Hans-Walter (1992): Rassenhygiene, Nationalsozialismus, Euthanasie. Von der Verhütung zur Vernichtung „le-bensunwerten Lebens“ 1890-1945. Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 75. 2. Aufl. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Schuhmacher, Birgit (2018): Inklusion für Menschen mit Demenz. Exklusionsrisiken und Teilnahmechancen. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

Recommended citation: Laura Dietl (2025): Perspectives on the Historical Approach to Dementia. In: Public Disability History 10 (2025) 4.

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“Thou lump of foul deformity”: Richard III, William Shakespeare, and The Lost King

By Emmeline Burdett

The 2022 film ‘The Lost King’ tells the story of how the remains of the last Plantagenet king of England, Richard III (1452-1485) were rediscovered in a car park in Leicester, in 2012. (The Plantagenet dynasty ruled England from 1154 until 1485 and was succeeded by the Tudors). The rediscovery was spearheaded by an amateur historian, Philippa Langley. The film emphasizes that Langley feels a strong kinship with Richard because she sees parallels between the way in which he was portrayed as disabled as a way of discrediting him, and the way in which she has been looked down upon as a person with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis). It is not uncommon for people with both ME, and other hidden impairments, to spend years, if not decades, attempting to get a diagnosis from a largely unsympathetic medical profession. Indeed, several times during the film ‘The Lost King’, Langley (played by Sally Hawkins) insists ‘It [ME] is a real illness!’. She does so with all the fervour of a person who has been repeatedly made aware that ‘real illnesses’ are ones which can be readily seen and identified by others – not ones which can be felt only by the people who have them.

Historical Background

Richard III was slain at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. He was the last English king to be slain in battle. Because he was the last Plantagenet king of England, and because his death led to the beginning of the Tudor dynasty, it has been argued that the Tudors wanted to blacken his name, and that they did this in two ways – by portraying him as disabled, and by portraying him as deciding that, because he was disabled, he (in the words of William Shakespeare’s play about him) ‘could not prove a lover’, and would therefore hurtle enthusiastically down the path of least resistance and ‘prove a villain’(Langley, 2013, pp.30-52 provides an overview of this long-running debate). These ideas were given their most eloquent and enduring expression in the playwright William Shakespeare’s play Richard III, written c.1592-1594, the full title of which gives an account of Richard III’s supposed crimes, namely “his treacherous Plots against his brother Clarence: the pitiful murther [murder] of his innocent nephews: his tyrannical vaurpation [usurpation]: with the whole course of his detested life and most deserved death”. The play itself was based partly upon Sir Thomas More’s History of Richard III, published in 1513. Sir Thomas More’s text focused on Richard’s appearance, describing him as

Little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard-favoured in appearance…’ (Sir Thomas More, quoted in Langley, 2022).

In the same way that Shakespeare’s play would later do, More’s biography makes the argument that deficiencies in Richard’s physical appearance were reflected in his character, and that

‘He was close and secret, a deep dissembler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart, outwardly friendly where he inwardly hated, not omitting to kiss where he thought to kill, pitiless and cruel…’

A Painting by an Unknown Artist

In the film ‘The Lost King’, Philippa Langley shows her husband (played by Steve Coogan) a photograph of a portrait of Richard III which has been overpainted to change his features so that they correspond more exactly to More’s description of his physical appearance. The portrait in question was first recorded in the inventory of the Tudor king Henry VIII, and analysis of its wooden panel suggests that it was painted between 1504 and 1520, probably from an earlier painting created during its subject’s lifetime. Though there is no indication of who painted the portrait, the British Library website speculates that the artist was either Flemish or British, and working at the English court. (British Library) The painting has been subject to various striking alterations – for example, the line of Richard’s coat has been altered to suggest that his right shoulder was much higher than his left, his eyes have been overpainted a steely grey and the corners of his mouth have been turned down to give him a more malevolent appearance. One alteration to which Langley draws attention in ‘The Lost King’ is that Richard’s fingers have been elongated to make them appear more like talons. These changes can be seen with the naked eye as the overpainting has aged differently from the rest of the painting. (British Library)

Figure 1 - A version of the painting in question. Credit: This Portrait by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA.

In their book The Lost King: The Search for Richard III, Langley and her co-author Michael Jones observe that, although it is now more widely accepted in academic circles that this view of Richard is deeply flawed, the image of Shakespeare’s hunchbacked, limping villain has been difficult to shake from the public imagination.(Langley, 2022, 49) Though they report that few members of the public regard Shakespeare’s portrayal as historically accurate, the fact of its existence tells us some things about fifteenth and sixteenth century English beliefs about disability. Chief amongst these was a belief in astrology, and this was of great importance to one of Richard III’s earliest detractors - the Warwickshire priest and antiquarian John Rous. In his history of the English kings, which was written during the reign of King Henry VII (1485-1509), Rous moved Richard’s date of birth from 2nd October (under the sign of Libra) forward three weeks to enable him to write ‘At his nativity Scorpio was in the ascendant … and like a scorpion he combined a smooth front with a stinging tail’.(Langley, 2022, 39). This was considered important because it tallied with the widespread belief in the power of astrology and its ability to manipulate events. (Vincent-Connolly, 2021,52).

That Richard III had a long history of being considered disabled – either because he was, or as a way of discrediting him, or both – makes a claim made in the British online journal Disability Arts Online seem rather bizarre. In an article published in October 2022, Jeffrey R. Wilson claimed that ‘Richard only really became disabled in the 1980s’. (Wilson, 2). Wilson was, though, making the point that, up until then, the possibility of Richard’s disability had not been seen as an important part of either his identity or of that of the actor who played him. This started to change with the late Antony Sher, who in 1984 drew on his memories of using elbow crutches when he broke his leg to accentuate Shakespeare’s description of Richard III as a ‘bottled spider’. Sher’s research for the role included ‘watching interviews with psychopaths’ and ‘reading about mass-murderers’, which would suggest that he was not challenging Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard III as someone who had reached the top by killing anyone who got in his way. Sher also watched Stephen Dwoskin’s autobiographical film Outside In, about his experience of polio. Sher seems to have found in Dwoskin’s film a confirmation of what he already thought disability was – a purely physical experience:

Very useful for Richard. He [Dwoskin] has severe polio in both legs and has to wear complete callipers, so the legs can’t bend at all. He walks with crutches and even then, has enormous difficulty throwing each leg forward. I must use this – the hip throw. (Sher, 150)

Another sequence of him [Dwoskin] limping slowly out of the darkness into a square of light. A way of starting the play?  … You hear ‘Now is the winter’ coming from the darkness, then he starts to limp into the light… (Ibid)

 

Figure 2 - Anthony Sher as Richard III 1984. Credit: This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA.

All of this suggests that Sher believed that if his Richard III looked right, that was all that mattered. With such a visual portrayal, this was of course not irrelevant, but neither was it the only thing of any importance, particularly as the idea that he had a disability had played such a significant part in attempts to discredit him. Indeed, this seems not to have been understood, as someone with whom Sher discussed his preparation for the role suggested that Richard III’s physical disability should be a visual marker of his inner moral deformity:
Sher reports that the actor Richard Wilson asks him why the crutches that are so important to him are not mentioned in the text of the play Richard III, which Sher counters by saying that other characters keep referring to him as various four-legged creatures. Richard Wilson then asks, ‘Why should it [Richard’s physical disability] be such a hang-up otherwise?’[unless it was severe]  (Quoted in Sher, 1985,139).

Why would someone be ‘hung-up’ on relentless unnecessary mentions by those around them of a characteristic which was incessantly used as a stick to beat them with? Possibly because the person in question is not made of stone? In Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre, Jane describes the ‘reproach of my dependence’ as being ‘very painful and crushing’, and whilst the descriptions of Richard III were intimately connected with the play’s depiction of him as evil, rather than, as in Jane Eyre, with the dreadful crime of having been sent, as a baby, to live with rich relations who did not want her and never missed an opportunity to tell her so, it seems that he was subjected, sniper-like, to frequent uses of his disability as a way of criticising him, whether or not such criticism was actually valid. Antony Sher’s book talks about how other characters in the play ‘keep’ referring to Richard III as various four-legged creatures, and gives the specific example of his wife, Lady Anne, referring to him as “a lump of foul deformity”. (Sher, 1985,139)  Continuous reminders that one does not belong to the ‘tribe’ in which one happens to find oneself (and that, by extension, those who do belong to it, are not merely reaping the benefits of something that had nothing to do with them at all and thus for which they cannot legitimately claim any credit – well done, Lady Anne – congratulations on your colossal personal achievement!) constitute a process known as Othering, and Sher’s comment that other characters ‘keep’ referring to Richard III as various kinds of four-legged creature suggests that this happens more than once. Looking at the play itself reveals that various characters refer to Richard III as ‘a toad’, ‘a hedgehog’, ‘a bottled spider’, and so on. This takes us back to Sir Thomas More’s description of Richard III as being ‘close and secret’ and ‘outwardly friendly where he inwardly hated’, as one reaction to being Othered might be the development of a character where no-one really gets to know you. This sounds a very modern insight for a play written in about 1592-4, but a lot has been written about how acute Shakespeare’s understanding of psychology was, and of, for example, how Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Oedipus Complex was developed thanks to Freud’s reading of Hamlet. This could be another example of Shakespeare being well ahead of his contemporaries, particularly as one does not have to be disabled to be Othered; one must merely possess a characteristic which sets one apart from others, and which they feel entitled to use against one. This insight may have been lost on Elizabethan theatregoers who simply wanted to boo a villain and enjoy Shakespeare’s rather colourful insults, but that does not mean that it did not exist. It may subsequently have been lost as an insight into the behaviour of a disabled character for several reasons: non-disabled people’s behaviour towards disabled people often goes unquestioned and unnoticed; a perception that there is nothing to say about disability, and so on.   The play opens with Richard III bemoaning his own fate, and this is certainly a more comforting idea for most people – that disability discrimination is somehow less wrong because the disabled person is suffering primarily from the torment of differing from the norm anyway. The modern idea of the social model of disability challenges this, by saying that people are disabled by society’s failure to accommodate them – for example by being sent a letter in an inaccessible format when one is visually impaired, or being unable to get into a station – or the part of a station which one needs – because one is a wheelchair user and the platform can only be reached via a flight of steps. It is ignorant to assume that the social model existed in an era which ended with the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603, when it was in fact not suggested until the 1970s. 

In his article in Disability Arts Online, Jeff Wilson gives the example of various non-disabled actors who have played Richard III, and argues that they tend to be extremely athletic, which does not suggest that they really had mobility impairments. (Wilson, 2022,2) On the other hand, the impairment that Richard III is thought to have had – a type of spinal curvature called scoliosis – would apparently not have prevented success on the battlefield and would not have been visible once he was wearing armour. (Vincent-Connolly, 2021,145).

This leaves two questions unanswered. Firstly, was Richard III actually disabled, or was that just a claim made to discredit him? Secondly, what significance does the question have today? 

In answer to the first question, when the skeleton was excavated from its resting-place in the car park in Leicester in September 2012, it was shown that it did indeed have a spinal curvature. It was pronounced, but as it was well-balanced, would probably have resulted in little physical disfigurement, and the fact that the bones of both legs were well-developed suggests that Richard III would probably not have walked with a limp. (Appleby et al, 2014, 1944). Not quite the person described by William Shakespeare and Thomas More.  

In answer to the second question, there has been a persistent perception that Richard III’s reputation needed rehabilitating, but this has not always related to a feeling of fellowship with him due to a real or imputed disability. For example, the Gothic novelist Horace Walpole’s Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third was published in 1768 and seems to have been much more preoccupied with the idea that Richard III’s bad reputation was based on the continued failure robustly to interrogate sources which, like Sir Thomas More’s biography of Richard III, were themselves deeply flawed. On the other hand, Philippa Langley seems only to have started looking for Richard III’s remains after she discovered that she felt that they had both been looked down upon because of a perceived disability. In addition, The Lost King relates Langley’s unhappiness with a scoliosis specialist’s tendency to describe Richard III as a ‘hunchback’ – a word which Langley does not explain her dislike of, except to call it “that awful word” which she thought “had been discarded”. (Langley, 2022, 170). She gives the impression of somebody who takes the description of someone else far too personally, but one might suggest that it is bound up with her feelings of kinship towards Richard III, and also with her experiences of feeling judged and improperly understood by the medical profession in particular. In addition, she says that she thought that the word ‘hunchback’ had been discarded. This could be a reference to the controversy surrounding the 1996 Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame, based on Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel Notre Dame of Paris. Disney’s decision to use the word ‘hunchback’ to describe the famous character of Quasimodo was among the aspects of the film which were criticized; some disability activists claimed that using the word was pejorative and that it raised various problems which it  made little attempt to solve – chiefly that small children were (allegedly) afraid of the Quasimodo character, something which Disney’s attempts to make him less frightening had not solved, as his character might still cause small children to recoil, and refer to disabled people in general as ‘hunchbacks’. In addition, the film gave the impression that all disabled people were physically unattractive. (Knight-Ridder, 1996) One of Disney’s executives, Peter Schneider, said that they ‘had’ to use the word, but it is unclear why he thought that Disney was so powerless that it could not have avoided using a contentious word, particularly as the film’s advertisement posters made no mention of Victor Hugo (something which angered Hugo’s descendants), and the book is often known as Notre Dame of Paris anyway. (Strauss, 1996)

‘Nobody tweaks the Bard’

I came across this claim a few months ago, made in a television drama by a character directing a Shakespeare play, and I thought it was ridiculous. Everyone tweaks the Bard. Well, not everyone, obviously. A significant number of people have, though, whether in terms of changing the era or the location of one of Shakespeare’s plays to make a point, and Shakespeare is often known as ‘The Bard of Avon’ to reflect this. As far as disability is concerned, the most recent ‘tweak’ is the 2024 production of Richard III which starred Michelle Terry in the title role and had a cast that was exclusively female or non-binary. Despite its commitment to other kinds of modern concerns (in addition to its casting, the play explored ideas of toxic masculinity), it seemed clear from a Q & A session with two cast members (Helen Schlesinger and Katie Erich) that I went to as part of a Richard III study day at the Globe Theatre in London in August 2024 that the cast rather felt that the controversy surrounding Terry’s decision to erase Richard III’s disability had rained on their parade. As one cast member, Katie Erich, used British Sign Language, and brought a British Sign Language interpreter along to the Q & A, it was surprising that, unlike Philippa Langley, she seemed to feel no solidarity with Richard. It may have been that Erich viewed herself as a member of a linguistic minority rather than as a disabled person, and she may simply have seen British Sign Language as something which enabled her to do her job without the necessity of having to lip-read her colleagues as well. It seems that one thing to consider is that seeing disability as a purely individual phenomenon helps to encourage the idea that no ethical questions arise from it.

Dr Emmeline Burdett is an independent researcher.

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References:
Appleby et al. ‘The scoliosis of Richard III, last Plantagenet King of England, diagnosis and clinical significance’, The Lancet, 2014 (vol.383), p. 1944.
British Library, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/richard-iii-portrait-with-overpaint-c-1504-20
Langley, P. and Jones, M. (2022) The Lost King: The Search for Richard III. John Murray.
Sher, A. (1985). Year of the King. Nick Hern Books.
Shakespeare, W. (2000). The Tragedy of King Richard III. Oxford World’s Classics.
Strauss, Bob. ‘Courting controversy? Disney’s Newest Animated Feature, ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’, Takes On Sensitive Adult Issues’, (1996), Sunday, June 23rd.
Vincent-Connolly, P. (2021). Disability and the Tudors: All the King’s Fools. Pen and Sword Books.
Wilson, J. ‘Cripping Richard III’. Disability Arts Online, (2022), October 3rd.
Wolfe Knight-Ridder, Kathi, ‘Another Burden for the Disabled’, The Spokesman Review, (1996), Wednesday, July 3rd.
 

Recommended citation: Emmeline Burdett (2025): "Thou lump of foul deformity". Richard III, William Shakespeare, and The Lost King. In: Public Disability History 10 (2025) 3.

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Disability history in the classroom – the LETHE-project

By Sebastian Barsch & Andreas Hübner

Disability History is not only an academic subject. The question of the social construction of disability also raises fundamental questions about how power is distributed in a society, how normality and abnormality are defined and how definitions change over time. Disability history can thus also enrich the teaching of history by providing children with perspectives on history, power and powerlessness that have been largely neglected.

However, in the few cases where teaching materials on the history of disability exist, there are often two problems: firstly, people with disabilities are often portrayed only as victims. Secondly, the history of dealing with disability is often presented as a success story, for example, when discussing positive developments in social services and the inclusion of disabled people in society. And yes, this is important too! It is important to show that the situation of people with disabilities has often been one of suffering, of exclusion and murder. So learners also need to learn about these terrible aspects of history, to deal with them, to understand their emotions and to work with them. This is also done in the hope that learning from history will be achieved and that young people will be empowered to take a stand against exclusion in the present. It is also important to address the fact that the situation for people with disabilities may well have improved, depending on the time and region. To ignore this is to ignore part of history.

However, this approach is also too simplistic. What is missing from the teaching of history in schools is a multi-perspective approach to disability. Questions can be asked: Has the history of disability always been one of exclusion? Have 'we' really come so far? What agency have people with disabilities experienced at different times and in different regions? Where do they appear as actors in history? Which stories remain hidden in official curricula and national narratives? And how can these “invisible” histories help foster a multi-perspective approach to the past?

These are the key questions explored by LETHE – (e-)Learning the Invisible History of Europe through Material Culture, a portal funded by the European Union. While LETHE is not solely focused on disability history, but rather on overlooked histories in general, the core question remains the same: How can we bring hidden narratives to light?

To do so, LETHE introduces, among others, a “hidden” disability history that leads students on a journey tracing the monument of the Grey Buses in Ravensburg, Baden Wuerttemberg. The Grey Buses Monument commemorates the victims of National Socialist euthanasia and the so-called “T4 Program”. The euthanasia program meant to systematically eliminate what eugenicists and their supporters considered “life unworthy of life”: those persons who the Nazi regime deemed as psychiatric, neurological, or physical disable. Yet, being deemed “unworthy of life” or “disable” by the Nazi regime was not about a person’s “abilities”, but it was a means of a specialized language that dehumanized victims. The “T4 Program,” named after the address of the central control center at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin, initiated a campaign of mass murder by involuntary euthanasia. Beginning in 1939, this systematically organized extermination program marked the industrial-scale killing of vulnerable individuals in Nazi Germany.

Based on the Grey Buses Monument, students delve into the hidden history of how disability was problematically managed in both German states. By studying prominent figures from the West German disability movement, such as Franz Christoph, they gain valuable insights into the agency of people with disabilities and learn to place this agency within a historical context. Engaging with these hidden histories, students come to understand how individuals who were once marginalized can be empowered to emerge as active agents in shaping their own narratives.

In this, LETHE addresses the experience of victimisation in the story. But it does not stop there. The central question for the teaching materials here is how continuity and change, cause and effect have manifested themselves in different times and regions in relation to the phenomenon of disability. Through the stories of victims, stories of self-determined participation are also told. For example, under the economically difficult conditions of socialism in the GDR (Link zu behinderung-ddr.de einfügen) , people acquired aids to increase their own mobility and thus created accessibility where the political administration did not provide for it. But the discovery of the skeleton of a child with Down's syndrome from the 5th and 6th centuries, with an elaborate burial ritual, also raises the question of whether disabled people have always been marginalized.

Screenshot from the LETHE-project teaching material on disabilities.

What these examples show is that a complex phenomenon like disability cannot be treated in a less complex way, because history is not less complex and human societies are even less so. But what is also crucial in dealing with the phenomenon of disability is the question of how students can be actively involved and how they can generate their own questions and form their own judgements within this multi-perspective view of disability, in order to gain orientation for their own lives.

Perhaps it is precisely these examples, away from the usual master narratives, that are suitable to illustrate the real diversity of historical and contemporary societies and to get young people actively involved in a discussion about how we want to live in the present without (again) excluding certain groups. Given the current global political situation, this seems more important than ever.

Link to the LETHE-website:
https://letheproject.eu/

Sebastian Barsch is professor for history education at the University of Cologne, Germany. His work and research interests focus among others on inclusive history education. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6715-1466

Andreas Hübner is Senior Lecturer in History Education at Kiel University. His teaching and research focus on global history, history didactics, the Anthropocene and environmental studies. Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3885-4429 

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Recommended citation: Sebastian Barsch & Andreas Hübner (2025): Disability history in the classroom – the LETHE-project. In: Public Disability History 10 (2025) 2.

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The "Counter-Monument" of the Grey Buses: Emotion Networking as a Method for Public Disability History

By Janneke van der Heide & Jan-Christian Wilkening

Introduction

Remembering the crimes committed against people with disabilities during the Nazi era as part of the T4 program is organized in many ways in Germany. Exhibitions and memorial sites are an integral part of this culture of remembrance, as are monuments commemorating the victims of the National Socialist regime in Germany. One of these monuments is the Monument of the Grey Buses. Designed by the artists Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz and originally erected in Ravensburg in Germany in 2006, a stylistically identical Wanderdenkmal [moving monument] was created shortly after. Said Wanderdenkmal has continuously been changing its location and has been temporarily installed across 16 different German cities since its creation. The goal of both the permanently installed and moving monument is the same, namely to commemorate the more than 200,000 victims of the T4 action organized between 1940 and 1941. Grey buses of the Gemeinnützige Krankentransportgesellschaft GmbH [non-profit patient transport company] transported victims to various extermination camps in the German Reich, where they were systematically murdered (Hamm, 2005; Henke, 2008).
The possibilities for engaging with the Monument of the Grey Buses are diverse and have already been the subject of publications (e.g. Müller et al., 2017, for a more general approach towards the theory of memory culture see e. g. Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995). In the following remarks, we would like to focus on emotion networking as a specific method that we believe is suitable for using said monument (and others) to initiate historical learning processes in the context of public disability history. Therefore, we will first give insights into Aktion T4, to the Monument of the Grey Buses, and to its importance for public disability history in Germany. Then, the method of emotion networking will be introduced and it will be explained how this approach can be used to critically reflect on monuments that commemorate people with disabilities. We will conclude with some further thoughts on the relevance of emotion networking for the remembrance of people with disabilities who fell victim to the National Socialist regime in Germany.

Remembering the Perpetrators and Victims of Aktion T4

August 18th 2024 marked the eighty-fifth anniversary of the order of the National Socialist regime in Germany to have allegedly inferior children systematically murdered; an order that was later extended to adults under the name Aktion T4, an order that symbolizes the crimes of National Socialism like no other singular event (Schlebach, 2024). The “euthanasia” program was the culmination of a Nazi social policy aimed at the exclusion and extermination of allegedly inferior life. It was designed to target all people who, according to the regime's understanding, were abnormal, dangerous to the public, incapable of working, or in need of permanent care (Aly, 2014). In addition to the almost 200,000 people who were murdered in the course of Aktion T4, there were 400,000 people who were forcibly sterilized in accordance with the Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses [Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring], a law created to prevent alleged hereditary diseases, which was passed on January 1st, 1934. These victims did not conform to the Nationalist Socialists' ideas of racial hygiene and were therefore to be neutralized (Klee, 2001). The National Socialist government had abandoned the traditional system of reference, which placed the individual person at the center of medical, preventive, and rehabilitative efforts, in favor of the health of the Volksgemeinschaft, and therefore cemented eugenic patterns of thought (Thümmel, 2003). Eugenic thinking has its origins in the nineteenth century and had already been critically discussed in the Weimar Republic after the publication of the essay "Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens" ["Permitting the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life"] (1920) by the jurist Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche. However, it had never been put to practice during that time and was only fully implemented on the political stage during the Nazi regime (Staudinger, 1999; Bezenhöfer, 2009).
The Monument of the Grey Buses is a reminder of Aktion T4 (image 1). Not only in one place, but rather (temporarily) in several German cities that are connected to the mass murder of people with disabilities. For example, the memorial has previously been placed in Berlin's Tiergartenstrasse (2008), from where the T4 operation was coordinated. Further, it has been placed in front of various former killing centres where the victims were brought to in the grey busses – such as in Pirna (2010) or Hadamar (2018) – to be murdered systematically.

Image 1 - Original Monument of the Grey Buses in Ravensburg. Credit: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denkmal_der_Grauen_Busse, last accessed on 05.12.2024

The Monument of the Grey Buses was designed by the two artists Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz, who see the memorial as a place of remembrance for perpetrators and victims alike:

“However, the design is not only intended to commemorate the victims of the ‘euthanasia’ campaign, the deed and the perpetrators are also reflected in the bus as a memorial. The artists use the grey buses as a means of transporting memories, so to speak.” (Stadt Ravensburg, 2006 [our translation])

Hoheisel and Knitz themselves describe their monument as a counter-monument (NRW Skulptur, n. d.). According to Quentin Stevens, Karen A. Franck and Ruth Fazakerley, counter-monuments can be distinguished from conventional monuments in terms of subject, form, site, visitor, experience and meaning (Stevens et al., 2012). While conventional monuments commemorate famous people in a country, counter-monuments aim to focus primarily on the history of victims, as Stevens and colleagues explain (ibid., p. 955). In addition, the authors argue, counter-monuments have a rather abstract form, are inconspicuously integrated into their surroundings, evoke a “close, bodily encounter by the visitors” and do not allow a uniform interpretation:

“Anti-monumental approaches … , offer no easy answers. They remain ambiguous and resist any unified interpretation; their meanings are often dependent on visitors’ historical knowledge, or supplementary information made available through signs, brochures, guides or interpretive centres.” (ibid., p. 961)

The Monument of the Grey Buses represents a valuable source for people interested in public disability history for two reasons. Firstly, the intended discussions and reflections on the crimes committed against people with disabilities during the Nazi era as well as their after-effects and significance for the present are not limited to only one location. Rather, the traveling counter-monument enables historical discussions around groups of perpetrators and victims in different places across Germany. This can be considered to be important for Germany as there is still a need to shed more light on the crimes committed against people with disabilities during the Nazi era. For example, only recently, Lebenshilfe e. V., an advocacy group for people with intellectual disabilities, called for the victims of Aktion T4 to be recognized as victims of persecution (Lebenshilfe, 2023). The travelling monument can also act as a starting point for explicitly initiated historical learning processes from which pupils, students and other historically interested people alike can benefit. In recent years, various considerations have been made and materials have been created that deal with the (extracurricular) thematization of monuments in Germany (Dräger, 2021; Dräger, 2022). Whether or to what extent memorials that deal with the history of people with disabilities during the Nazi era should be specifically addressed was just as little a subject of discussion as was the question of the extent to which special methodological approaches would have to be developed in order to be able to convincingly come to terms with the Nazi crimes against people with disabilities with the help of memorials in learning communities.

Emotion Networking in Public Disability History

Dealing with the history of the National Socialist regime is often emotional, especially (but not only) in Germany. Anger, sadness, fear and disgust are just some of the emotions that can be triggered by confronting the crimes of the Nazis. When monuments in public history are in some shape or form connected with the National Socialist regime, like the Wanderdenkmal of the Grey Buses, the method of emotion networking offers a possibility to share emotions and knowledge about monuments in a structured way. Although an unstructured confrontation with one's own emotions does not have to be fundamentally bad, it seems necessary to us to at least think about structured procedures for historical learning in and outside of schools in order to prevent learners from becoming overwhelmed and traumatized.
Emotion networking is inspired by the ‘Circumplex Model of Emotion’ by the American psychologist James Russell (1980) and was developed around 2020 by Hester Dibbits of the Amsterdam Reinwardt Academy and Marlous Willemsen of the Amsterdam Institute ImagineIC (Dibbits, 2020). The activity can be organized both on paper and in space in a group setting. When emotion networking on paper, participants position their emotion(s) as a point in a circle along two dimensions of valence and arousal. By emotion networking in space (like in a classroom or in a public space), the participants gather around the object, showing their emotion by choosing a relative position towards the heritage object. The point of a personal emotional stance can be made visible by stepping forward or backward, or by putting images of emoji’s in front of them.
In October 2024, a group of 20 international students in an ERASMUS+ course on ‘Heritage Education’, organized by the University of Cologne (Germany), University of Leiden (Netherlands), the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands) and the Linnaeus University (Sweden), visited the Monument of the Grey Buses in Cologne. They were asked to stand around the object to position themselves emotionally and to choose one or two out of six emoji’s (ranging from angry and sad, to neutral and optimistic) that best expressed their emotions. Strong(er) feelings were expressed by putting the chosen emoji’s close to the heritage item, whilst weak(er) feelings were expressed by putting the chosen emoji’s further away (image 2). 

Image 2 - Schematic situation of emotion networking in space. Credit: www.emotienetwerken.nl, last accessed on 05.12.2024

We then asked the participants, following the protocol of the method, to voluntarily share and explain their position and feelings. One student responded that the experienced emotion was strong, because of the hard concrete the bus is made from, and that this represented in her eyes the harshness of the historical event to which it referred (image 3). Another student suggested that the size of the windows of the bus reflected the personal scale of the victims, as was the phrase that is carved in the stone in the midst of the bus: ‘Wohin bringt Ihr uns?’ [Where are you taking us?]. Another student expressed weak feelings towards the heritage object, not feeling any particular emotion in front of a – in her opinion – log and unwieldy concrete bus. Yet, most of the students felt affected by the senses when looking into the aisle down the middle of the bus, which is actually split in two parts. Striking and causing emotion for some students was that this particular aisle is suitable for wheelchairs, which made the connection of the impaired of past and present heartfelt. The particular geographical position of the monument did raise eyebrows, questioning the symbolic meaning of the perfect ‘see through’ from the aisle of the Monument on the Cologne Cathedral.
 

Image 3 - A group of international students at the Monument of the Grey Buses in Cologne. Credit: Picture of the authors, taken in October 2024

While the participants share their emotional arguments for choosing a particular spot around the heritage item, interruption is not allowed, as emotion networking is an exercise in listening to each other. After the interactions of emotions, emotion networking requires that knowledge is added by means of information about various stakeholders that are involved in the particular heritage. In a classroom setting, this knowledge is usually added by showing information sheets or slides or showing short videos of different people who represent multiple perspectives (Dibbits, 2020). When emotion networking in a particular space, such as at the Monument of the Grey Buses, information about stakeholders can be communicated by telling. In this case the used stakeholders were the disabled victims of the “euthanasia” policy of the Nazi regime, the relatives of the disabled victims of the “euthanasia” policy, the perpetrators like the managers of the institutions involved and doctors, the Nazi regime as such, the German population as such in wartime and postwar period, and the disabled patients and their relatives nowadays. After the sharing of knowledge by means of stakeholders to get a multiperspective view, the students can adjust their emotional position if their feelings have changed. Again, positions and arguments are then exchanged without interruptions from other participants. The question is if the awareness of multiple perspectives has redirected the emotions. Finally, to conclude the method of emotion networking, a short discussion can be instigated about the question ‘What has this exercise taught you about (this particular) heritage?’ (ibid.)
Emotion networking shows the complexity of different individual emotional stances and prevents the sometimes persistent bipolarity of collective emotional stances towards the heritage object. At the same time, it acknowledges that emotions may change by interacting and adding multiple perspectives and can be defined as dynamic. Thus, emotion networking provides insights into the interactions between the participants, as well as between the participants and the heritage item. (ibid.)
The overall goal of emotion networking around a sensitive heritage item, is – in the words of the developers Dibbits and Willemsen – to become “heritage wise”: acquiring “a competence that enables people to critically relate to heritage and discuss it, by paying attention to the social dynamics surrounding heritage and their own and others’ position in relationship to it” (ibid.). Whether the central item is a sensitive object in public disability history, or a sensitive social or historical topic to discuss in your history class, emotions are channeled by the structured form of the method, and by means of keeping a balance between individual emotion and knowledge of multiple perspectives.  

Conclusion

Memorials in Germany that exclusively commemorate Aktion T4 are rare. This makes it all the more important to consider how these few memorials can be used to provide learners with access to the history of people with disabilities under the Nazi regime. The emotion networking method seems suitable for discussing and reflecting on emotions triggered by monuments such as the Monument of the Grey Buses. Particularly in view of the emotional nature of the memory of the National Socialist regime, we believe that an examination of emotion networking would be beneficial in order to be able to use public disability history spaces as starting points for historical learning processes. We cannot answer how sustainable or effective emotion networking was for the international students mentioned above. However, we would like to point out the overall positive feedback from the students, who largely rated the excursion to the Monument of the Grey Buses positively. Therefore, we are confident that not only students interested in heritage education would benefit from emotion networking, but also people around the world who are interested in facing their emotions when confronted with the public history of disability.

Janneke van der Heide is a cultural historian and history teacher affiliated with the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. She completed her PhD at the University of Amsterdam on the political and social impact of Darwinism in the Netherlands (1859–1909). Her research interests include the reception of Darwin’s ideas and history education, and she has published in several edited volumes on the cultural reception of Darwin in Europe. Since 2008, she has taught courses on heritage education, cultural history, and the philosophy of history.

Jan-Christian Wilkening is working as a research assistant in the Department of History Education at the University of Cologne. He just defended his PhD thesis on “Historical Thinking and Learning of Students with Intellectual Disabilities: Participatory Practices of an Inclusive History Education”. His research primarily focuses on inclusive history education, public history, and historical thinking.

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Recommended citation: Janneke van der Heide & Jan-Christian Wilkening (2025): The "Counter-Monument" of the Grey Buses: Emotion Networking as a Method for Public Disability History. In: Public Disability History 10 (2025) 1.

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