The Revista Médica project: medical journals as instruments of German foreign cultural policy towards Latin America, 1920-1938

After the First World War, foreign cultural policy became one of the few fields in which Germany could act with relative freedom from the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. In this context the Hamburg doctors Ludolph Brauer, Bernhard Nocht and Peter Mühlens created the Revista Médica de Hamburgo (as of 1928 Revista Médica Germano-Ibero-Americana), a monthly medical journal in Spanish (and occasionally in Portuguese), to increase German influence especially in Latin American countries. The focus of this article is on the protagonists of this project, the Hamburg doctors, the Foreign Office in Berlin, the German pharmaceutical industry, and the publishing houses involved.