Alfred Pischinger (1899-1983): An Austrian career in anatomy continuing through National Socialism to postwar leadership.

Despite intensified research efforts on the history of anatomy during National Socialism (NS), many aspects of this story still need further investigation. This study explores the life, work and politics of Alfred Pischinger, Chairman of the Institute for Embryology and Histology in Graz from 1936 to 1945, and in Vienna from 1958 to 1970, and is an addition to previous reports on careers in anatomy continuing through the Third Reich to the postwar period. Pischinger was an illegal NSDAP member in Austria, joined the SA in 1938, served as expert in racial hygiene, and as judge on the Genetic Health High Court of Graz. His research focus was histochemistry, but he became part of a scientific network at the University of Graz, which from 1939 on experimented on the bodies of pregnant women and their fetuses under the leadership of gynecologist Karl Ehrhardt. The researchers were among the many who took actively part in the complete exploitation and physical destruction of those considered to be "the enemy" by the NS regime. After the war, Pischinger received publicity for his work on the "scientific basis" of alternative and holistic approaches of medicine. His NS past and fetal experiments seem to have vanished from public knowledge. As systematic studies of the influence of the NS period on postwar medical education and the science of anatomy itself are still missing, this critical investigation of Alfred Pischinger's life within the relevant historic background aims to contribute to this body of knowledge.

[The company Willmar Schwabe in the Nazi era]. / Die Firma Willmar Schwabe in der NS-Zeit.

This essay follows the history of the Schwabe Company between 1933 and 1945 when it, like all other companies at the time, had to subject to the state-enforced conformity ('Gleichschaltung'). While Willmar Schwabe II (1878-1935), the company's second director, kept clear of Nazi politics, both of his sons, who succeeded him at an early age, became members of the Nazi party: Willmar III (1907-1983) probably from initial conviction and Wolfgang (1912-2000), who joined in 1937, more likely for opportunistic reasons. The two lay journals published by Schwabe--the Leipziger Populäre Zeitschrift für Homöopathie and the Biochemische Monatsblätter--embraced the Nazi ideology more thoroughly than the general homeopathic journal Allgemeine Homöopathische Zeitung, including above all contributions on racial hygiene. Our research has revealed that Schwabe only employed foreign workers from 1942 on, that their number was much lower, at 0.9 per cent in 1942 and 3.6 per cent in 1944, than that of other pharmaceutical companies and that their pay hardly differed from that of German workers. The sales and profit figures investigated have shown that the company did not profit exceptionally from the new Nazi health policies ('Neue Deutsche Heilkunde'): while its sales and profits rose in the Nazi era due to the increased use of medication among the civil population during wartime, the drugs produced by Schwabe remained marginal also during the war, as is apparent also from its modest deliveries to the army. All in all one can conclude that the company offered neither resistance nor particular support to the Nazi ideology.

Use of Rorschach tests at the Nuremberg war crimes trial: A forgotten chapter in history of medicine.

Seventy years ago, psychiatrists and psychologists had unusual access to the Nazi leaders awaiting trial by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Early leaders in the field of psychosomatic medicine were instrumental in facilitating these interviews as well as arranging for the administration of psychological testing with the Rorschach inkblot test. These observations were kept under wraps for decades and there remains controversy even now about what these Rorschachs revealed-demonic psychopaths or just morally corrupt individuals.

[Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Werner Heisenberg]. / Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker und Werner Heisenberg.

The 50-year relationship between Weizsäcker and Heisenberg spanned the highpoints of discovery and dictatorship during the 1930s, extended into the war-time uranium project, the post-war controversy over that project, debates over West German nuclear policy, and the philosophical implications of modern physics. This paper explores the interaction between these two leading figures during that difficult and significant half-century.

[Max Hirsch founder of rheumatology in Germany: banished and murdered]. / Max Hirsch, Begründer der Rheumatologie in Deutschland: Vertrieben und ermordet.

The Jewish physician and scientist Dr. Max Hirsch (1875-1941) made a substantial contribution to consolidation of the foundations of his professional discipline, balneology, and in particular developed the social aspects. He recognized the economic significance of diseases of the musculoskeletal system very early on and gathered important ideas from abroad. Together with the department head in the Prussian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, the Privy Councillor Prof. Dr. Eduard Dietrich and later alone, he was editor of various balneological journals. He worked as general secretary of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rheumatologie (German Society of Rheumatology) from the beginning of its existence (1927) and created the publication series Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Rheumabekämpfung (Publications of the German Society against Rheumatism) and Rheuma-Jahrbuch (Annual review of rheumatology) in 1929, 1930 and 1931 and organized seven rheumatology congresses up to 1933. After the accession to power of the National Socialists, Max Hirsch and Eduard Dietrich were deposed from office. Hirsch emigrated to Latvia via Switzerland and the Soviet Union with his wife and one son where they were murdered in the course of the Jewish pogrom. The second son escaped with his family to Sweden.

The neuropathology of morality: Germany 1930-1960.

This article analyzes brain scientists' attempts to trace morality in the brain in Germany from 1930 to 1960. The debate around Karl Kleist's localization of the Gemeinschafts-Ich [community-I] in the 1930s is depicted in order to illustrate the central arguments for and against localizations of morality. The focus of this article is on the period 1936-1960 in which experts put forth specific ideas on morality's cerebral underpinnings that mirror the larger theoretical shift from strict localization doctrine to a more holistic understanding of the brain. As a result of this shift, experts avoided exact localizations of morality. Instead, they posited correlations between brain areas and morality. The analysis illustrates the dependence of neuropathological research on morality on general theories of brain functioning and marks a first contribution to the history of the neuroscience of morality for the time after 1930.

Medicalized social hygiene? Tuberculosis policy in the German Democratic Republic.

This archive-based study investigates tuberculosis policy in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from the 1940s to the 1960s. The focus is on the sanatorium as the major site of treatment and on BCG vaccination as the major preventive tool. The article tests and accepts the thesis that the GDR's guiding health paradigm is best described by the term "medicalized social hygiene." The article finds that methods of both treatment and prevention were characterized less by radical change and innovation than by tradition and pragmatism at least until the mid-1950s. Thus, "forced institutionalization" of "asocial" patients continued after 1945. Yet the health ministry long hesitated to make BCG vaccination obligatory. The German past, the Cold War context of German-German rivalry, and medical and popular attitudes toward vaccination, TB, and TB patients are considered as possible explanations for the mix of continuity and change in TB policy.

[Institutionalization without gaining reputation. The incomplete establishment of pharmaceutical science in the universities of the German Reich and the Federal Republic of Germany until the 1970s]. / Institutionalisierung ohne Reputationsgewinn. Die unvollständige Etablierung der Pharmazie an den Hochschulen des Deutschen Reiches und der Bun- desrepublik bis in die 1970er Jahre.

This article analyzes the highly problematic institutionalization of pharmacy as an independent discipline at universities. Focussing on contemporary documents, collected from 'gateways' of reputational allocation such as appointment procedures, the nominations of examination boards, and the granting of certificates, it can be shown that institutionalization was not identical with reputational allocation, distributed by the scientific community. This means that the cycle of credibility developed by Latour and Woolgar could not be completed. Furthermore the pharmaceutical sub disciplines are assessed differently by the scientific community. The main reason can be seen in specific mechanism of reputational allocation within those scientific fields from which pharmacy adopted its methods and instruments. For this end the article uses the comparative analysis of scientific fields from Richard Whitley.

Hypnosis: seventy years of amazement, and still don't know what it is!

This paper has reviewed the author's experience with hypnosis and related therapies from 1934 through World War II, psychological warfare, multiple personality, the origins and feuding of hypnosis societies, the development of hypnotic ego state therapy and the unique contributions of his colleague and wife, Helen Watkins.

[Healing current through a goiter. The life, work and after effects of the magic healer Bruno Gröning]. / Heilstrom durch den Kropf. Leben, Werk und Nachwirkung des Wunderheilers Bruno Gröning (1906-1959).

During the years between 1949 and 1959 the wonder healer Bruno Gröning (1906-1959) gripped the public and medical interest in Germany. He explained to be a descent of Jesus Christ, sending "healing waves" to end diseases and made a lot of money. Finally he was found guilty in letting a persuaded fan dying and was convicted. But before the end of the process he died of carcinoma, which had been operated in a regular clinic. Despite this obvious problem that Gröning demanded from his admirers refusing medical help but preferred it for his own health today his successors are still promoting his legacy.

Johannes Heinrich Schultz and National Socialism.

BACKGROUND: Johannes Heinrich Schultz (1884-1970) established the set of techniques known as "autogenic training." From 1936 until 1945 he worked as assistant director of the Göring Institute. His role during National Socialism has been underestimated in our opinion. METHOD: We considered Schultz's academic publications and his "autobiography" from 1964. RESULTS: Schultz publicly advocated compulsory sterilization as well as the "annihilation of life unworthy of life" and developed a diagnostic scheme which distinguished between the neurotic/curable and the hereditary/ incurable. In fact, this classification was then employed to decide between life and death. In order to justify the "New German Psychotherapy" alongside eugenic psychiatry, Schultz carried out degrading and inhuman "treatments" of homosexual prisoners of concentration camps who were in mortal danger. LIMITATIONS: This study was based on written documents. We were not able to interview contemporary witnesses. CONCLUSION: By advocating compulsory sterilization and the "annihilation of life unworthy of life" and by the abuse of homosexuals as research objects Schultz violated fundamental ethical principles of psychiatry.

'Arzteführerschule Alt-Rehse'--the main educational centre for promotion of Nazi medicine ideology in Germany during 1935 - 1943.

In Nazi Germany 1933-1945 the medical profession played an important role, not only within the health sector but also for ideological purposes. Some physicians committed criminal acts during the war, for example in concentration camps, and where later put on trial at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946-1947, some of them also sentenced to death. What is little known outside Germany is the existence of a specialised political leader school for physicians, dentists, midwives, pharmacists, and health officials at Alt-Rehse, a small village north of Berlin in the province of Mecklenburg, Northern Germany. Supported by historical documents it can be shown that the ideological training at Alt-Rehse was structured, politically effective, and well appreciated by the many attending students visiting the school. There is reason to believe that former Alt-Rehse students took part in Nazi criminal acts of war, but this is hard to prove as all documents were captured by the Russian Army at the end of the Second World War and have until now not been traced. Documents have shown that also many foreign visitors came to Alt-Rehse, from the UK, Sweden, Japan, and other countries during the pre-war years. The lessons from Alt-Rehse include how a totalitarian ideology can shape the professional role of health workers.