Susanne Paola Antonetta is the author of the new book The Devil's Castle: Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today. Her other books include The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
Q: What inspired you to write The Devil’s Castle?
A: That’s an interesting question, as the book itself changed as I went along. I started out writing about Paul Schreber, a German judge institutionalized for life in the late 1800s. He litigated his own release and in the process became what I call the greatest advocate for the mad.
Schreber didn’t demand release on the grounds that he wasn’t insane. He said what others experienced as his insanity was a transformative experience, deeply spiritual. The five judges, who released him, became five of his biggest fans.
I began researching the Nazi euthanasia program as Schreber’s asylum, Sonnenstein, was used as a killing facility in 1940 and 1941.
I also discovered Nazi survivor Dorothea Buck in 2019, when she died at the age of 102. I was well into the book by then, but Buck was such an incredible woman, she kind of took over. She was forcibly sterilized at the age of 19 due to her diagnosis of schizophrenia and remained an activist until her death.
The story of Buck and Schreber, and the way German pre-war medicine has influenced contemporary U.S. psychiatry, became the heart of the book. Then I was stuck for several years due to covid—I had research trips to do but places were shut down, people unavailable. The book then became more personal and meditative, though still deeply researched.
Q: Can you say more about how you researched the book? What did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I did multiple trips to Germany and visited Sonnenstein and other sites important to the euthanasia program. I also interviewed Germans who had known and worked with Buck.
That a euthanasia program existed in Germany, and preceded as well as helped create the Holocaust, shocked me—the extent of it, the lack of acknowledgment and reparations for it.
And then it shocked me that U.S. medicine was still able to look at a character like German doctor Emil Kraepelin—who had as students many Nazi doctors—and say, Hey, let’s revive him and bring back his thinking.
As counterbalance, many stories of those who behaved heroically emerged—those are the good shocks. Dorothea Buck, prosecutors like Fritz Bauer, David Rosenhan, who faked madness to get admitted to a psych hospital in 1969 and expose what went on there. That people behave badly we understand. Such heroism on the other hand is wondrous.
Q: The author Anil Seth said of the book, “Poetic, shocking, darkly illuminating, and deeply optimistic--The Devil's Castle offers a powerful rallying cry for us to cherish the diversity of minds that enrich our societies and our worlds. An important and timely book.” What do you think of that assessment?
A: Honestly, it’s one of my favorites! I think one thing that doesn’t always come across in a brief description of The Devil’s Castle is its profound optimism. We have the knowledge and the tools we need to not just reduce the emotional distress in our country, but to make our relationships with our minds far more positive and healthy.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Paul Schreber, when he was forcibly brought to Sonnenstein asylum, called it “the Devil’s castle.” The institution, with its fall from being the premier European asylum to a killing center in a little over a century, illustrates how badly mind care can go wrong—even when we think it’s becoming more “modern.” That movement seemed to capture so much of what I’m writing about.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I can’t say why exactly, but two years ago I moved to Asheville and was here for the aftermath of tropical storm Helene. The damage was devastating, and in the wake of it—and helping out with the recovery efforts—I’ve been working more on poetry.
I pulled out a project I started several decades ago, after some tragedies happened close to me. The poems are about the importance of human existence, even in lives that seem maybe less than impactful.
I’m also working on a book about Shakespeare and the way he uses mad characters and fools in the plays. I don’t know a writer who did better at creating neurodiverse characters, or who recognized their value more.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I would say that for those suffering mentally or emotionally, or those who have loved ones that are—there’s much hope. Understand what we’re doing now is only one way of looking at things and influenced by many factors other than the good of the patient. Use my book or other books to understand there are many other ways to emerge stronger from those dark places.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Susanne Paola Antonetta.
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