Rights Not Handouts! The Austrian Disability Rights Movement in the Interwar Years

Taking the slogan “Work, not pity” as their motto, people with physical disabilities founded the First Austrian Cripple Working Group in 1926. It was an extremely active group and campaigned for access to work, education and medical care. Internally it sought to build and strengthen a sense of community and self-confidence, whilst externally its aim was to exert influence on politics and public opinion. By publishing its own journal, Der Krüppel (The Cripple), the working group gave the movement a loud voice of its own. The demand for work was central: through work, people would liberate themselves from a life of dependency and external control.

The exhibition traces the history of this first wave of the disability rights movement, whilst also highlighting the precarious living conditions faced by people with disabilities in the interwar years. It concludes by looking ahead to the end of the movement with the Nazi seizure of power and the difficult new beginning after 1945.

The touring exhibition is part of the project “100 Years of the Disability Rights Movement” by Volker Schönwiese and Angela Wegscheider.