„Wir wollen mit den ersten Heften nicht gleich Sigerist und die Amerikaner verärgern!“

Abstract

Drawing on scattered archival records this article explores the circumstances allowing the new release of the German medico-historical journal “Sudhoffs Archiv” in 1952. The article focuses on the paralyzing conditions of the publishing trade in post-1945 Germany due to a tremendous lack of resources, a growing political East-West-antagonism and the Nazi background of both authors and publishers. The article examines how academics competed for influence in the newly-structured field of German Medical History which, in the 1950s, underwent a generational change. However, former students' loyalties to their teachers remained very close resulting in a search for continuity. This became visible when, in 1952, the first postwar volume of “Sudhoffs Archiv“ appeared, joining together a first part comprising of articles authored and submitted to the editors in 1943 and a second part consisting of articles submitted for the 1952 re-launch, epitomizing the missed chance for a new beginning. The examined correspondences of the new editors shed light on the protagonists' political opportunism vis-a-vis readers outside Germany and their struggle both for quality assurance in a discipline, which was deprived of its most progressive exponents as a consequence of emigration during the Nazi period, and for recognition in the international scientific community. In this complex field of conflicting interests, the journal missed a substantial and methodological reorientation in the 1950s.