[New research issues in the history of German sexology and sexual medicine]. / Neue Forschungsfragen in der Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualmedizin.

New research questions in the history of German sexology and sexual medicine include a new look at the Imperial and the Weimar Republic periods and Magnus Hirschfeld as a protagonist, as well as the contemporary history of the discipline in the Federal Republic with the two formative institutes in Frankfurt (Volkmar Sigusch) and Hamburg (Eberhard Schorsch). In the post-war period, the tendency to try to solve social problems through endocrinological and surgical approaches continued. This included the (voluntary) castration of sex offenders, which has been regulated by law in the West Germany since 1969. Questions of gender identity do not only arise in the context of gender reassignment surgery. They also have high social relevance and have become increasingly politicized in recent years. These questions are also persistently relevant for urology and clinical sexual medicine.

[The genesis of informed consent in the context of medical research ethics 1900-1931]. / Die Genese des Informed Consent im Kontext der medizinischen Forschungsethik 1900­1931.

At the turn of the 20th century, the problem of human experimentation and the need to obtain consent became more important among medical practitioners and the general public. The case of the venereologist Albert Neisser, among others, is used to trace the development of research ethics standards in Germany between the end of the 19th century and 1931. The concept of informed consent, which originated in research ethics, is also of central importance in clinical ethics today.

[Why in Koenigsberg, why Samuel Jessner, why 1921? : History of the first university lectureship for sexology in Germany]. / Warum in Königsberg, warum Samuel Jessner, warum 1921? : Hintergründe zum ersten universitären Lehrauftrag für Sexualwissenschaft in Deutschland.

The dermatologist and venerologist Samuel Jessner (1895-1929) received a lectureship for sexology at the University of Koenigsberg (today: Russian Калининград, Kaliningrad) in 1921. Since 1928 he was also listed as a urologist in the Reichsmedizinalkalender (German Physician Address Calendar). In this article we trace his life and work and ask how Jessner was able to achieve this academic success in the periphery of German sexology and without close ties to its networks. His weak influence in research, his lack of connection to a "school" of sexual science in German-speaking countries, and his Jewish origin were factors that impaired both the recognition of his work among his contemporaries and his recognition in the discipline-specific historiography until today.

"He Gave Us the Cornerstone of Sexual Medicine": A Nobel Plan but No Nobel Prize for Eugen Steinach.

This paper reviews the files in the archive of the Nobel Prize Committee for Physiology or Medicine on the Austrian physiologist and pioneering researcher in the emerging fields of urology and sexual medicine: Eugen Steinach (1861-1944). It reconstructs and analyzes why and by whom Steinach was nominated for the Nobel Prize between 1920 and 1938 and discusses the reasons why he never received the award, although the Nobel Committee judged him as prizeworthy. Steinach's Nobel nominee career is extraordinary - not only because of his strong support by renowned international nominators from different scientific and medical disciplines, but also because of the controversial discussions within the Nobel Committee on his achievements, colored by the debates in the international scientific community. The Nobel Prize story adds a new perspective on how contemporary international scholars evaluated Steinach's research on reproduction, "male-making" females, "female-making" males, homosexuality, and the concept of rejuvenation.

Study of deaths by suicide of homosexual prisoners in Nazi Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Living conditions in Nazi concentration camps were harsh and inhumane, leading many prisoners to commit suicide. Sachsenhausen (Oranienburg, Germany) was a concentration camp that operated from 1936 to 1945. More than 200,000 people were detained there under Nazi rule. This study analyzes deaths classified as suicides by inmates in this camp, classified as homosexuals, both according to the surviving Nazi files. This collective was especially repressed by the Nazi authorities. Data was collected from the archives of Sachsenhausen Memorial and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen. Original death certificates and autopsy reports were reviewed. Until the end of World War II, there are 14 death certificates which state "suicide" as cause of death of prisoners classified as homosexuals, all of them men aged between 23 and 59 years and of various religions and social strata. Based on a population of 1,200 prisoners classified as homosexuals, this allows us to calculate a suicide rate of 1,167/100,000 (over the period of eight years) for this population, a rate 10 times higher than for global inmates (111/100,000). However, our study has several limitations: not all suicides are registered; some murders were covered-up as suicides; most documents were lost during the war or destroyed by the Nazis when leaving the camps and not much data is available from other camps to compare. We conclude that committing suicides in Sachsenhausen was a common practice, although accurate data may be impossible to obtain.

Nobel Prize nominees and the rise of urology in Europe around 1900.

PURPOSE: Recent historical research has reconstructed the roads leading to the Nobel Prize for the trained urologists Werner Forssmann (1904-1979) in 1956 and Charles Huggins (1901-1997) in 1966. However, the story of urology and the Nobel Prize does not start and end with the laureates. Taking James Israel (1848-1926), Félix Guyon (1831-1920), and Peter J Freyer (1852-1921) as examples, this paper shows that pioneers in urology were in fact runners-up for the award much earlier. METHODS: The study is based on an analysis of original files in the Nobel Prize archive in Stockholm, scientific publications of the early twentieth century, and secondary literature. RESULT AND CONCLUSION: We argue that Israel's, Guyon's, and Freyer's candidacies reflect not only scientific trends and controversies in urology at the turn of twentieth century, but that the development of the specialty itself was reflected in nominations of physicians working on problems of the genito-urinary system.

Study of Deaths by Suicide in the Soviet Special Camp Number 7 (Sachsenhausen), 1945-1950.

After World War II, Sachsenhausen Nazi concentration camp (Oranienburg) was administered until the spring of 1950 by Soviet occupation forces (Special Camp Number 7) and used mainly for political prisoners. Our study analyzes suicides in this camp during the Soviet period. Data was collected from the archives of Sachsenhausen Memorial, Special Camp Collection. Original documents containing certificates or autopsy reports of prisoners who committing suicide were reviewed. In this period, authorities registered 17 suicides. The age of suicides was between 19 and 64 years. The most frequent cause of imprisonment was Blockleiter (Kapo in Nazi period, n = 4), Mitarbeiter Gestapo (member of the Gestapo, n = 3) and Wehrmacht (military, n = 3). Hanging was the most frequent method of suicide. The average time spent in the camp until suicide was 715 days. The number of recorded suicides under Soviet control is considerably lower (calculated rate 2.8/10,000 per year) than under Nazi control (calculated rate 11/10,000 per year). This could be due to comparably more favorable conditions for prisoners and the abolishment of the death penalty during this period. Possible motives for suicides include feelings of guilt for crimes committed, fear of punishment and a misguided understanding of honor on the eve of criminal trials.

[Dentists and National Socialism. Systematic Literature Review and Research Questions]. / Zahnärzte und Dentisten im Nationalsozialismus. Forschungsstand und aktuelle Forschungsfragen.

Compared to the rich literature on Nazi medicine in general, the connection between dentists and National Socialism is less well documented. Neither the elites of the field from this era nor those excluded from the profession are catalogued in a systematic manner. The aims of this contribution are to assemble and review the relevant literature and show how German dentistry organizations have handled this chapter of their professional history. Trends in the literature since the 1980s are examined and it is pointed out, which areas have received some attention and which have not yet been addressed. Thus, this contribution will serve as both the basis and the starting point for new research into the field.

Werner Forssmann - A Nobel Prize Winner and His Political Attitude before and after 1945.

PURPOSE: In 1956, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Werner Forssmann, André Frédéric Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards for their development of cardiac catheterization. Forssmann performed a self-experiment in 1929 by inserting a urethral catheter into his right ventricular cavity via his antecubital vein. Despite his popularity as one of the first German Nobel Laureates after 1945, little is known about Forssmann personally. This contribution aims to close this gap regarding the Nazi period and early post-war Germany. METHODS: Primary historical sources from Forssmann's private archive were examined, evaluated and interpreted for the first time. Additionally, a comparative analysis based on further archival and secondary sources was performed. RESULTS: Werner Forssmann joined the Nazi Party, the Sturmabteilung (Stormtroopers, SA) and the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Ärztebund (Nazi Doctors' Association) in 1932, a year before Hitler's assumption of power. In his autobiography, Forssmann referred to the political situation in passing. However, he expressed his personal thoughts in private letters which he wrote as a medical officer during the war. After World War II, Forssmann underwent denazification and was banned from practicing medicine for 3 years. He did not seem to be averse to Hitler's politics and in some ways expressed his approval. However, correspondence from the 1960s with 2 Jewish colleagues reveals that Forssmann may have changed his attitude toward National Socialism later. CONCLUSION: Werner Forssmann's political attitudes during the Third Reich and in the post-war era can be characterized as early agreement that gradually changed to a more critical distance to Nazi ideology. In this respect, Forssmann appears to be quite a typical example of a larger proportion of German medical doctors during these eras.

Remembering Charles B. Huggins' Nobel Prize for Hormonal Treatment of Prostatic Cancer at its 50th Anniversary.

Charles B. Huggins received the Nobel Prize in 1966. Based on archival sources from the Nobel archive we have found that nominators emphasised the practical therapeutic applications of his discoveries that were showing 25 yr after his key publications.

A stone never cut for: a new interpretation of The Cure of Folly by Jheronimus Bosch.

From the late 15th century onwards, cutting for stones in patients' heads to cure mental illness was depicted in European art. The earliest and most famous painting of this kind is The Cure of Folly, painted by Jheronimus Bosch around the turn of the 15th to the 16th century. In general, these depictions are thought to relate to surgical as well as mental health practices of that time. However, it can be questioned whether barber surgeons or quacks cut for stones in patients' heads, and if they did not, what the meaning of Bosch's and other artists' paintings might be. Paintings from the 15th to 17th centuries and historical sources from the history of medicine as well as art history served as a basis for this contribution. The combination of sources from the histories of urology and psychiatry opens a new perspective on depictions of cranial lithotomy. Taking this into account, it does not seem likely that surgeons or quacks cut for cranial stones in early modern Europe. Few therapy options existed to effectively treat mental problems, and, hence, most interpretations of Bosch's picture point to the gullibility of patients as its central theme. At the same time, the depictions of cranial lithotomy may illustrate the limits of the medical profession and an abstract hope for successful psychosurgery analogous to the surgical removal of stones from the urinary tract.

German urologists under national socialism.

OBJECTIVES: The first full-time professorship for urology at a German university was established in 1937 and in 1942, a rare teaching qualification (Habilitation) for urology was granted, both at the prestigious Berlin University. At the same time, nearly a third of all physicians who worked in the field of urology were classified as "non-Aryan" according to Nazi race laws and were forced out of their profession and their homeland. Many of them committed suicide or, if they refused to flee, were murdered in concentration camps. German urologists also contributed to compulsory sterilization of men according to the "law for the prevention of hereditarily diseased offspring" between 1934 and 1945. METHODS: Historical sources on the history of urology in Nazi Germany were reviewed and analyzed. These include textbooks and medical journals from the 1930s and 1940s, as well as files from different state and university archives. RESULTS: For urologists, the changing political environment in Germany after 1933 offered possibilities to assert their personal and professional interests. Unfortunately, in many cases, moral principles were thrown overboard, and physicians advanced their own careers and the specialty of urology at the expense of their patients and their Jewish colleagues. CONCLUSION: Under national socialism, German urologists backed Nazi health and race policies and in exchange gained further professionalization for their specialty, including university positions and increased independence from surgery. Only in recent years has this chapter of German urology's past become a topic of debate among members of the professional society.