The History of Cancer and Emotions in Twentieth-Century Germany

Abstract

Bettina Hitzer, Heisenberg Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at the Technische Universität Dresden and Privatdozentin at the Freie Universität Berlin, has written what may fairly be called a definitive history of cancer in twentieth-century Germany. The special merit and value of Hitzer’s book is, as she puts it, the analysis of ‘three modes of the disease’s relation to emotions [...] the genesis of scientific, and above all medical and psychological concepts of what emotions are [...] the shifts in different types of knowledge about emotions and cancer [...] and the role that emotions played in clinical, preventive, palliative, and private approaches towards cancer and those diagnosed with it’ (p. 359). The coverage of the topic is exhaustive, indeed complete. While sometimes involved—given the many complexities of the history and the author’s analysis of it—the writing is clear. The translation is also quite satisfactory, apart from the occasional choice of informality (‘Sure, these concepts’, p. 4) or odd usage (‘clipped the plausibility’, p. 37; ‘impressing testament’, p. 105; ‘Allied bomb raid’, p. 288). The author’s choice of a thematic organization by chapter in the place of an overall chronological approach is, with a couple of exceptions noted below, very effectively deployed and realized.