Paul Diepgen as a senior within his field after 1945

Abstract

Paul Diepgen (1878-1966), professor emeritus in Berlin in 1945, remained a leading figure within the field of German medical historians from 1947 onwards in his capacity as "guest professor" in Mainz. The present article focuses on two areas in which Diepgen was particularly active within his academic field as documented in his extensive correspondence: firstly the resumption of contacts with émigrés and other foreign colleagues which was hampered by Diepgen's ambivalent relationship to the National Socialist regime and secondly the establishment of the history of medicine as a full academic discipline. Up until 1961, he continued to nominate his pupils who had been politically "incriminated" during the Nazi period for academic positions, but simultaneously encouraged younger colleagues and campaigned for the establishment of a comprehensive academic degree course in the history of medicine. An examination of the confrontation between Diepgen and Werner Leibbrand additionally reveals Diepgen's not always uncontroversial concept of the history of medicine.