Sudhoffs Archiv

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-à-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.