Entusiasm, skepsis, distans: studier i svensk-tyska förbindelser inom medicinen 1933–1945

The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyse Swedish-German contacts in
medicine 1933-1945. It shows how the National Socialist German Physicians’
Federation (NSDÄB) tried to strengthen connections with the Swedish medical
profession and academic medicine and to spread NS-propaganda to carefully selected
Swedish physicians. The dissertation consists of four papers.
In the first paper the international contacts and impact of the leader school
for German doctors (Führerschule der deutschen Ärzteschaft) in Alt Rehse 1935-
1943 are examined through studies of a visitors’ book and of biographies. I suggest
that the Führerschule, an institution providing political and ideological education
for health professionals, interested international physicians to a larger
extent than earlier described. The legacy from the German elite school for physicians
in Alt Rehse also included some Swedish contacts and it was described in at
least one contemporary Swedish publication in 1938.
In the second and third papers I argue, that there existed, in the 1930’s and
1940’s, well-functioning medical contacts between the two countries –
in spite
of the fact that the ’Swedish Society of Medicine’ tried to downplay the relations
with Germany.
Drawing on sources from private and state archives in Estonia, Germany
and Sweden, the fourth paper investigates the career of the gynaecologist Benno
Ottow (1884-1975): from his time as a junior physician period in Estonia and
Russia to his directorship of the Brandenburg gynaecological state hospital in
Berlin-Neukölln and the postwar-years spent in Sweden. During the Nazi dictatorship
Ottow demonstrated great commitment to putting the ideological and
legal demands into practice.
The general summary of the thesis is that the Swedish-German contacts in
medicine during the Third Reich years were multi-facetted and included both official
and unofficial contacts with prominent representatives of Swedish medicine
visiting Germany several times during the war years.