scholarly journals Medical Science Meets ‘Development Aid’ Transfer and Adaptation of West German Microbiology to Togo, 1960–1980

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Carola Rensch ◽  
Walter Bruchhausen
Keyword(s):  
Doctoral Students ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
International Health ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Joint Work ◽  
German Development ◽  
German Model ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Work Abroad

After losing the importance it had held around 1900 both as a colonial power and in the field of tropical medicine, Germany searched for a new place in international health care during decolonisation. Under the aegis of early government ‘development aid’, which started in 1956, medical academics from West German universities became involved in several Asian, African and South American countries. The example selected for closer study is the support for the national hygiene institute in Togo, a former German ‘model colony’ and now a stout ally of the West. Positioned between public health and scientific research, between ‘development aid’ and academia and between West German and West African interests, the project required multiple arrangements that are analysed for their impact on the co-operation between the two countries. In a country like Togo, where higher education had been neglected under colonial rule, having qualified national staff became the decisive factor for the project. While routine services soon worked well, research required more sustained ‘capacity building’ and did not lead to joint work on equal terms. In West Germany, the arrangement with the universities was a mutual benefit deal for government officials and medical academics. West German ‘development aid’ did not have to create permanent jobs at home for the consulting experts it needed; it improved its chances to find sufficiently qualified German staff to work abroad and it profited from the academic renown of its consultants. The medical scientists secured jobs and research opportunities for their postgraduates, received grants for foreign doctoral students, gained additional expertise and enjoyed international prestige. Independence from foreign politics was not an issue for most West German medical academics in the 1960s.

Image Under Fire: West German Development Aid and the Ghana Press War, 1960–1966

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
John Wesley Weigel
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
West Germany ◽  
World Peace ◽  
Small State ◽  
German Development ◽  
Kwame Nkrumah ◽  
The Press ◽  
Political Relationship ◽  
The 1960S

During the 1960s, development aid helped West Germany project a benign image while it discouraged diplomatic recognition of East Germany. In Ghana, however, this effort clashed with the Pan-Africanist aims of President Kwame Nkrumah. Four periodicals under his control attacked West Germany as neo-colonialist, militarist, racist, latently Nazi and a danger to world peace. West German officials resented this campaign and tried to make it stop, but none of their tactics, not even vague threats to aid, worked for long. The attacks ended with Nkrumah's overthrow in early 1966, but while they lasted, they demonstrated that a small state receiving aid could use the press to invert its asymmetric political relationship with the donor.

scholarly journals Development Aid and Solidarity Work: East and West German Health Cooperation with Low-Income Countries, 1945 to 1970

Gesnerus ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-187
Author(s):  
Walter Bruchhausen ◽  
Iris Borowy
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
International Health ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Strong Position ◽  
Scale Composition

Between 1949 and 1989, both the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the West and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the East, engaged in health-related relations with low-income countries in the global South. The strong position of the churches in West Germany and the dominant position of the state in the East provided the preconditions for diverging international health activities, as did differences in ideology and economic status. Activities entailed similarities (an initial focus on clinical therapy and material donations) and differences (in scale, composition of actors and conceptualization). Programs evolved gradually, reacting to circumstances rather than a master plan. By the late 1960s, international health assistance was mainly organized as a component of “development aid” in the FRG, while regarded as “solidarity” in the GDR, in both cases designed to spur changes in recipient countries according to the respective Northern models as components of a perceived direct, global East-West confrontation.

Nursing Body and Soul in the Parish: Lutheran Deaconess Motherhouses in Germany and the United States

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Kreutzer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
The United States ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Parish Nursing ◽  
The Face ◽  
German Model ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Principal Work ◽  
The 1960S

In Lutheran Germany, parish nursing traditionally constituted the deaconesses’ principal work. As “Christian mothers of the parish” they were charged with a wide spectrum of tasks, including nursing, social service, and pastoral care. At the center of the Christian understanding of nursing was the idea of nursing body and soul as a unity. This article analyzes the conception and transformation of Protestant parish nursing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Germany and the United States, which developed very differently. In West Germany, parish nursing proved surprisingly resistant to modernization even in the face of upheavals of the 1960s, and in some places this traditional model survived as late as the 1980s and 1990s. In the United States, by contrast, an understanding of nursing rooted in the division of labor between care for body and care for soul had come to prevail by the 1920s and ‘30s, pushing out the German model of the parish deaconess altogether.

“Because every recipient is also a potential patient” – TV Health Programmes in the FRG and the GDR, from the 1960s to the 1980s

Gesnerus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-191
Author(s):  
Susanne Vollberg
Keyword(s):  
Public Awareness ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Continuous Coverage ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Television Programme ◽  
East German ◽  
Health And Disease ◽  
Media Systems ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
And Function

In the television programme of West Germany from the 1960s to the 1980s, health magazines like Gesundheitsmagazin Praxis [Practice Health Magazine] (produced by ZDF)1 or ARD-Ratgeber: Gesundheit [ARD Health Advisor] played an important role in addressing health and disease as topics of public awareness. With their health magazine Visite [Doctor’s rounds], East German television, too relied on continuous coverage and reporting in the field. On the example of above magazines, this paper will examine the history, design and function of health communication in magazine-type formats. Before the background of the changes in media policy experienced over three decades and the different media systems in the then two Germanys, it will discuss the question of whether television was able to move health relevant topics and issues into public consciousness.

scholarly journals Creating Destinations for a Better Tomorrow: UN Development Aid for Cultural Tourism in the 1960s

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942097476
Author(s):  
Marie Huber
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Employment Sector ◽  
Development Decade ◽  
Colonial Legacies ◽  
The Subject ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
International Experts

Tourism is today considered as a crucial employment sector in many developing countries. In the growing field of historical tourism research, however, the relationships between tourism and development, and the role of international organizations, above all the UN, have been given little attention to date. My paper will illuminate how during the 1960s tourism first became the subject of UN policies and a praised solution for developing countries. Examples from expert consultancy missions in developing countries such as Ethiopia, India and Nepal will be contextualized within the more general debates and programme activities for heritage conservation and also the first UN development decade. Drawing on sources from the archives of UNESCO, as well as tourism promotion material, it will be possible to understand how tourism sectors in many so-called developing countries were shaped considerably by this international cooperation. Like in other areas of development aid, activities in tourism were grounded in scientific studies and based on statistical data and analysis by international experts. Examining this knowledge production is a telling exercise in understanding development histories colonial legacies under the umbrella of the UN during the 1960s and 1970s.

Avarice, Inefficiency, and Inequality: An International Health Care Tale

1977 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-190
Author(s):  
Alan Maynard
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Care Delivery ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
International Health ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Health Care Outcomes ◽  
Care Outcomes ◽  
Health Care Delivery Systems ◽  
The Cost

The paper is concerned with impact of a medical profession, physicians, on the delivery of health care. The basic economic motivation of self-interest and avarice has led this profession to produce health care outcomes which are inequitable and inefficient. In the first section of the paper the regional geographical distribution of physicians in four disparate health systems—England, Ireland, France, and West Germany-is analyzed and found to be highly unequal. The next section is concerned with the efficacy of therapies and the cost-effectiveness of health care delivery systems in a variety of countries. The final section discusses how health care can be more equitably and more efficiently delivered. It is argued that both markets and bureaucracies are likely to be inadequate unless carefully monitored. In particular, there is a great need to investigate the cost-effectiveness of therapies and then persuade physicians, via pecuniary and nonpecuniary incentives, to behave in a manner which leads to more equitable and efficient health care outcomes.

Service Learning: The Peace Corps, American Higher Education, and the Limits of Modernist Ideas of Development and Citizenship

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-505
Author(s):  
David S. Busch
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Citizenship Education ◽  
Peace Corps ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Work Abroad ◽  
The University

In the early 1960s, Peace Corps staff turned to American colleges and universities to prepare young Americans for volunteer service abroad. In doing so, the agency applied the university's modernist conceptions of citizenship education to volunteer training. The training staff and volunteers quickly discovered, however, that prevailing methods of education in the university were ineffective for community-development work abroad. As a result, the agency evolved its own pedagogical practices and helped shape early ideas of service learning in American higher education. The Peace Corps staff and supporters nonetheless maintained the assumptions of development and modernist citizenship, setting limits on the broader visions of education emerging out of international volunteerism in the 1960s. The history of the Peace Corps training in the 1960s and the agency's efforts to rethink training approaches offer a window onto the underlying tensions of citizenship education in the modern university.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document