Attempting a Great Integration : Paul Martini and the First Post-War Conference of the German Society for Internal Medicine

Abstract

The long established German Society for Internal Medicine (DGIM) profoundly incriminated itself through its actions and positions during the National Socialist era. The German clinical physician Paul Martini assumed the part of reorganizing the DGIM prior to its first post-war convention in 1948 in Karlsruhe. Martini, who himself had opposed the Nazi regime, adopted acourse of comprehensive integration. He strived to incorporate both physicians who had been persecuted by the Nazi Regime as well as former moderate National Socialists into the DGIM. At the same time he campaigned to preserve the pan-German nature of the conferences and aimed rapidly to make the DGIM re-compatible with international research. However, this path led to an allegedly apolitical focus on science and decades of largely failing to confront its Nazi past.