[The Appointment of Paediatric Professorships in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the early GDR. The Impact of the Political System Change after 1945].

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of the political system change after 1945 on the appointment of paediatric professorships in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR up until the time the Wall was built in 1961. It can be demonstrated that the political purge in the post-war period had only minor impact on the appointment of professorships and the National Socialist past no longer mattered after the conclusion of denazification. In 1957, the proportion of former NSDAP members among East German university professors of paediatrics was 100 per cent. When it came to new appointments, both members of the "bourgeois" academic non-professorial teaching staff from the GDR as well as paediatricians from West Germany, who had largely gained their scientifically qualifications under National Socialism, were in the running. A politically-controlled elite exchange did not take place until the construction of the Wall. State and party organs generally followed the personnel proposals of the universities since an insufficient number of qualified candidates was available for the systematic appointment of ,,progressive" paediatricians. Given the lack of staff, the SED personnel policy was aimed at the integration of previous elites, as long as they behaved loyally towards the new state. Since the East German faculties continued to make the questioning of the professionally competent professors in West Germany and East Germany the basis for their appointment lists, West German university paediatricians were able to exert considerable influence on the appointment of East German paediatric professorship until 1960s.