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Helmut Baitsch, one of the five founding editors of this journal’s predecessor Humangenetik, died on August 3, 2007, at the age of 85 years. According to Weingart et al. (1988), the launch of the journal Humangenetik in 1964, almost 20 years after the end of the Nazi regime, marked “the new beginning of human genetics in Germany”. Regarded, together with Friedrich Vogel, as one of the founding fathers of a new and unblemished era of human genetics in post-war Germany, it is surely no coincidence that Helmut Baitsch was among the journal’s founding editors.

The first two decades of German post-war university medicine saw many of the supporters, followers and beneficiaries of the Nazis regaining power and influence. Among them was Otmar von Verschuer, a key proponent of the Nazi racial ideology and former Director of the infamous department of “Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene” at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute in Berlin. In 1951, von Verschuer was appointed Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Münster. From 1956 onwards, he also acted as editor of the Springer publication Zeitschrift für menschliche Vererbungs- und Konstitutionslehre (“Journal of Human Heredity and Constitution”). However, von Verschuer gave up this position only after eight years in 1964, supposedly because he was retiring from his professorship, but in reality against his will. The publishers had decided to rename the journal Humangenetik and appointed a new generation of editors, namely Helmut Baitsch, Peter E. Becker, Arno G. Motulsky, Friedrich Vogel, and G. Gerhard Wendt: none of whom was willing to work together with von Verschuer. In particular, Baitsch and Vogel suggested to von Verschuer that he give up his editorship because of his political past. However, Baitsch recollected that von Verschuer lacked any sense of wrong-doing in this context and declined to resign (Weingart et al. 1988).

Helmut Baitsch was born in Spessart, near Ettlingen (Baden), on November 21, 1921, and grew up in Karlsruhe. In what he described as a happy childhood, he was influenced by a left-liberal and pacifist home; his mother was a women’s liberation activist. His youth was overshadowed by the political changes in the 1930s, particularly the growing militarism in Germany. Immediately after his high school graduation, he was drafted first into forced labour (“Arbeitsdienst”) and then into the army. Becoming a soldier became “the cruellest time of his life”, years he had “never been able to cope with”.

After the war, Helmut Baitsch entered Munich Medical School where he wanted to train as a psychiatrist or psychotherapist. However, he soon came into contact with anthropology, a field which, at that time, had started to adopt some of the new technologies developed by serologists, biochemists and geneticists. Baitsch incorporated these developments into his MD and PhD theses. As one of the first scientists in Germany to perform electrophoretic separations of protein variants (using a homemade apparatus), he became a true pioneer in human biochemical genetics. In 1961, one year after he had reported his results on haptoglobin typing using Smithies’ starch gel electrophoresis (Baitsch et al. 1960), Baitsch was appointed Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Institute of Human Genetics and Anthropology at the University of Freiburg. He insisted that “Human Genetics” came first, followed by “Anthropology”, in the name of his institute to reflect his personal research priorities. Soon, evolutionary biology, developmental genetics, clinical and experimental cytogenetics, biochemistry, serology and molecular biology all flourished at the Freiburg institute. The group succeeded in establishing fruitful cooperations and international contacts. Baitsch’s credo was that both anthropology and human genetics should move from morphology to “molecularity”, i.e. from phenotype to genotype. Under the directorship of Baitsch and his successor, Ulrich Wolf, the “Freiburg School” proved fertile, and nearly a dozen of its trainees were later appointed to chairs in human genetics.

As a typical “novelty seeker”, Baitsch never stayed in the same position for very long. Whenever he realised that something he had started was flourishing, he moved on to the next challenge. Thus, he served as Rector of the University of Freiburg from 1966 to 1968 and soon thereafter assumed a new position with the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Research Foundation) in Bonn. He was a member of the DFG Senate and of the Board of Trustees, and, most importantly, became the far-sighted founder and chief administrator of the so-called “Sonderforschungsbereiche”. These prestigious research centres fostered interdisciplinary and collaborative research. Again, after having designed and put into practice this highly successful concept of research funding, Baitsch moved on to a new task. From 1970 to 1975, he served as Rector of the University of Ulm where he fought valiantly for educational reforms. After that, he returned to teaching and research. He held the chair of Anthropology and Scientific Research at the University of Ulm until his retirement in 1990.

Baitsch’s second great research theme was practical medical ethics. Focussing on the novel concept of non-directiveness in genetic counselling, his group collected and evaluated transcripts of counselling sessions. The participants of his numerous courses and seminars on topics such as genetic counselling, patient–physician interaction, medical ethics and integrity in medicine and research, acquired entirely new perceptions of teaching and training, including role play and psychodrama. Genetic counselling was viewed and practiced by Baitsch as a complex psychosocial process. Throughout his career, Baitsch was always concerned with the history and impact of anthropology and human genetics on society, the individual and the family unit. As early as 1958 (in his inaugural lecture as a young university “Dozent”) he held that “the attitude of the individual physician and geneticist towards human rights and patient autonomy determines the value of possible eugenic measures”. Baitsch envisaged the establishment of clinical advisory centres where genetic counselling would be provided “within the framework of the physician–patient relationship, i.e. with strict adherence to the duty of confidentiality”. In 1989, Baitsch initiated the Ulm-based study group on “Ethics in Medicine” which still exists to this day. This platform enabled him to work on a wide range of subjects, from genetic counselling via medical decision-making and conflict resolution in general, to research ethics, organisational ethics and, most importantly, methods of teaching medical ethics.

Helmut Baitsch was a member of the Club of Rome, an “Ehrenbürger” (honorary member) of the University of Ulm, honorary doctor of Hannover Medical School, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London. He was a great mountaineer, climbing Mounts Kilimanjaro and Meru in his 1970s, and an excellent cello player. He is survived by his wife, Gerlinde Sponholz, and four children from his first marriage.