Johann Joseph Jörger

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.^[1]

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.^[1]

As a psychiatrist, Jörger was particularly active in the field of eugenics. From the mid-1880s, he began compiling genealogies based on eugenics and racial biology concerning the Yenish of Graubünden. Drawing on these, he studied the cases of two families referred to by the pseudonyms "Zero" and "Markus"; his findings were published in 1919 under the title Psychiatrische Familiengeschichten by the German publisher Julius Springer-Verlag. In these texts, Jörger presented defamatory accounts of the alleged degeneration of these families, which he attempted to demonstrate "scientifically" across generations, relying chiefly on the theory of blastophthoria (damage to germ cells caused by alcohol) developed by Auguste Forel. He warned against the dangers of the spread of supposedly "inferior" genetic heritage and the financial burden placed on the public by the care of poor Yenish families.^[1]

Jörger's research in hereditary biology attracted wide interest beyond the field of psychiatry and served to "scientifically" legitimize the discrimination and persecution of the Yenish in the 20th century. Cantonal authorities and politicians in Graubünden drew on his writings to justify the introduction of the 1920 cantonal poor relief law, which provided for eugenic and coercive welfare measures against persons classified as "vagrants," including sterilization, prohibition of marriage, institutionalization, and child removal — the last of which Jörger was the first to advocate. The Psychiatrische Familiengeschichten served as the primary reference for the founding in 1926 by Pro Juventute of the "Kinder der Landstrasse" scheme. Its founder and director, Alfred Siegfried, repeatedly cited Jörger's work to justify the systematic dismantling of Yenish families and the placement of children in foster families or institutions (reform schools). Jörger's theories were also taken up in Nazi Germany, notably by Ernst Rüdin, who in 1933 participated in drafting the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Disease in Posterity (the sterilization law).^[1]