Medical interdependence during the Cold War: the history, negotiation and everyday life of the German-German Health Treaty

• Applicant: Dr. Annette Hinz-Wessels
• Subject Area: History of Science ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 405575677

The project examines the role of the 1974 Health Treaty negotiated between the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany in intra-German relations during the Cold War, taking into account aspects of the history of medicine, politics and everyday life. Until its signature, there had been officially neither common rules nor appropriate cooperation between the two German states in the field of health care. The project aims to examine this assertion on the basis the two states dealt in practice with the objects of negotiation which address a humanitarian point of view, namely the "mutual medical aid in cross-border passenger traffic" (Article 3) and the "execution of special treatments in the other German state" (Article 4), in the post-war period. Furthermore, it presents in detail the motives and objectives of the two negotiating parties and analyses the negotiation process as well as the respective national discourse. Finally, it examines the everyday practice of the rules laid down in Article 3 and 4 of the treaty and asks about the interactions between the treaty and the respective national development, German-German relations and the general East-West conflict.The files of the different actors of the cross-border cooperation in the field of health care as well as interviews with actors on the political level and contemporary witnesses who implanted the treaty into everyday practice form the basis of this project. With its task, the project closes a gap in the research of recent medical history and provides further insights into German-German interdependence, the everyday experience of German partition and the permeability of the "Iron Curtain" during the Cold War.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants