Josef Jörger

Johann Joseph Jörger (21 October 1860 – 31 August 1933) was a Swiss psychiatrist, founding director of the Waldhaus psychiatric clinic in Chur, and a prominent proponent of eugenics. His hereditary-biological research on Yenish families in Graubünden was used to legitimize the discrimination and persecution of the Yenish in 20th-century Switzerland, including forced child removals and sterilization.

Life

Jörger was the only son of Johann Benedikt Jörger, a blacksmith and farmer, and Fidelia née Vieli, from Vals. After attending primary school in Vals and secondary school in Schwyz, he studied medicine at the University of Basel and the University of Zurich (1880–1884, doctorate at Basel in 1888). He worked as a physician in Andeer (for the village and its spa establishment) in 1885, then as assistant physician and deputy physician (1886–1891), and briefly as acting director (1889) of the Sankt Pirminsberg psychiatric clinic in Pfäfers.

In 1892, Jörger took over the direction of the newly founded Waldhaus psychiatric clinic in Chur, a post he held until 1930. He also participated in the founding of other institutions for people with mental illness, notably in Herisau (1908) and at the Justizvollzugsanstalt Realta (1919). In 1885 he married Paulina Hubert, from Vals, daughter of Johann Anton Hubert, a cook and baker. The couple had four children, among them Johann Benedikt Jörger, also a psychiatrist, and Paula Jörger, a teacher and feminist activist.

Other activities

Jörger was a member of various professional associations, including the Swiss Society of Psychiatry, the Public Utility Society of the Canton of Graubünden, and the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC). He also wrote literary texts in the Vals dialect, in particular Urchigi Lüt (1918) and Dr hellig Garta (1920).

After Jörger's departure, his successor as director of Waldhaus, Gottlob Pflugfelder, continued in the 1950s to compile the documentation Jörger had begun and developed, under the pejorative name Sippenarchiv ("clan archive"), genealogical archives known as the Waldhaus Psychiatric Clinic Genealogical Archives.