Abstract
The Rockefeller Foundation has been one of the most powerful forces shaping twentieth-century science and medicine.1 It has enriched the world with magnificently equipped institutes, provided fellowships and shaped national science and health policies.2 The Foundation has been influenced by social trends that have been fundamental to the twentieth century: these forces include professionalisation and modern notions of management, the rising prestige of science, with the claim that it could provide socio-economic progress, and the United States’ assumption of a global trusteeship of democratic and civilised values. Whereas during the nineteenth century Germany was regarded as leading the world in scientific and medical education, this role has been increasingly assumed by the United States. The course of the Rockefeller’s relations with Germany is instructive, not merely as a case-study of the role of international agencies in a national context, but as giving insight into the emergence of overall policies and the organization of the Foundation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
D. Kevles, The Physicists (New York: Knopf, 1978). R. Olby, The Path to the Double Helix (London: Macmillan, 1974). R. E. Kohler, From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry, (Cambridge University Press, 1982). R. Stevens, American Medicine and the Public Interest (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).
R.B. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952).
R.E. Kohler, ‘A Policy for the Advancement of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation, 1924–29’, Minerva, XVI (1978) pp. 480–515, S. Cohen, ‘Foundation Officials and Fellowships: Innovation in the Patronage of Science’, Minerva, XIV (1976) pp. 225–40.
P. Abir-Am, ‘The Discourse of Physical Power and Biological Knowledge in the 1930s: A Reappraisal of the Rockefeller Foundation’s “Policy” in Molecular Biology’, Social Studies of Science, XII (1982) pp. 341–82.
J. Ettling, The Germ of Laziness, Rockefeller Philanthropy and Public Health in the New South (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1981).
E.R. Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men (Berkeley: California University Press, 1979). H.S. Berliner, A System of Scientific Medicine: Philanthropic Foundations in the Flexner Era (New York: Tavistock, 1985).
A. Flexner, An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), pp. 100–8.
D. Fisher, ‘The Impact of American Foundations on the Development of British University Education 1900–1939’, PhD thesis, University of California at Berkeley, 1977.
Rockefeller Archive Center (hereafter RAC), C. Lewerth, ‘Source Book for the History of the Rockefeller Foundation’ (typescript, cited hereafter as ‘History’), vol. 14, Medicine and Public Health 1919–1923, pp. 3500–5.
D. Kevles, ‘“Into Hostile Political Camps”. The Reorganisation of International Science in World War I’, Isis, LXII (1971) pp. 47–60.
P. Forman, ‘Scientific Internationalism and the Weimar Physicists: The Ideology and Its Manipulation in Germany after World War I’, Isis, LXIV (1973) pp. 151–80.
B. Schroeder-Gudehus, ‘The Argument for the Self-Government and Public Support of Science in Weimar Germany’, Minerva, X (1972) pp. 537–70.
RAC 1.1/717/8/47 Vincent to S. Flexner, 14 December 1922. Compare K. Macrakis, ‘Wissenschaftsförderung durch die Rockefeller-Stiftung im “Dritten Reich”. Die Entscheidung, das Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik finanziell zu unterstützen, 1934–39’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, XII (1986) pp. 348–79, 350–1. Macrakis’s study of physics complements this account of the biomedical sciences.
P.J. Weindling, Darwinism and Social Darwinism in Imperial Germany. The Contribution to Cell Biology by Oscar Hertwig (1849–1922) (Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer, 1988).
P.J. Weindling, ‘Die Preussische Medizinalverwaltung und die “Rassenhygiene”’, Zeitschrift für Sozialreform, (1984) pp. 675–87.
A. Flexner, Funds and Foundations (New York, 1979) pp. 77–100.
G.E. Allen, ‘The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910–1940. An Essay in Institutional History’, Osiris, 2 ser., II (1986) 225–64. RAC Bureau of Social Hygiene 2/138, 3/178 and 204 Eugenics, 4/619–21 Germany.
Kohler, ‘A Policy’ op. cit., pp. 499–501.
R.E. Kohler, ‘The Management of Science: The Experience of Warren Weaver and the Rockefeller Foundation Programme in Molecular Biology’, Minerva, XIV (1976), pp. 276–306.
J.A. Fuerst, ‘The Role of Reductionism in the Development of Molecular Biology: Peripheral or Central?’, Social Studies of Science, XII (1982) 241–78. Abir-Am, ‘The Discourse’, op. cit.
RAC 6.1/1.1/4/46. For human biology in Nazi Germany, see B. Müller-Hill, Tödliche Wissenschaft. Die Aussonderung von Juden, Zigeunern und Geisteskranken 1933–1945 (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1984).
E. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’ im NS-Staat (Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer, 1983).
RAC 1.1./717/10/58. W. Scholz, ‘Walther Spielmeyer (1879–1935) und sein Schülerkreis’, in W. Scholz (ed.), 50 Jahre Neuropathologie in Deutschland 1885–1935 (Stuttgart: Thieme, 1961) pp. 87–107.
M.M. Gowing, Britain and Atomic Energy, 1939–45 (London: Macmillan and New York: St Martin’s Press, 1964).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1988 Nicolaas A. Rupke
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Weindling, P. (1988). The Rockefeller Foundation and German Biomedical Sciences, 1920–40: from Educational Philanthropy to International Science Policy. In: Rupke, N.A. (eds) Science, Politics and the Public Good. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09514-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09514-8_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-09516-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-09514-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)