Using the example of the schools for the deaf operated by the Landschaftsverband Rheinland, the study describes the history of individuals in deaf schools during the second half of the 20th century. It examines the dynamics of power and institutional cultures within the total institution of deaf schools, as well as the intersections of deaf education and psychiatry. The everyday stories of people in deaf schools from the 1950s to the 1970s are significantly shaped by the conflicting deaf educational concepts of oralism and sign language communication. From the perspective of Disability History, it is primarily the voices of witnesses that provide insight into how deafness, as a social and cultural construction of disability, influenced life paths even at the end of the 20th century—and continues to do so today.