Die Medizin und das „Größere Deutschland”︁: Kolonialpolitik und Tropenmedizin in Deutschland, 1884–1914

When Imperial Germany entered the group of European colonial powers in 1884, among her enthusiastic physicians the question arose how the white man, as a representative of a vulnerable race, could be able to exist permanently in tropical regions. It is not surprising that German colonial circles especially the representatives of the organized German colonial movement were taking a keen interest in the same question. The Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society) inaugurated and financed international questionaire‐activities in the field of tropical medicine with the intention of supporting the institutionalization of this new medical discipline. In fact, the foundation of the Hamburg Institut für Schiffs‐ und Tropenkrankheiten in 1901 was not only a consequence of the specialisation of bacteriology but also an expression of the grasp of colonial politics for tropical medicine as an instrument of colonization. Ever since up to the loss of the imperial Schutzgebiete (protectorates) German tropical medicine has been in a very close connection with colonial politics. Its tasks ranged from the organization of medical infra‐structures at the colonial periphery to the delivery of instruments for the imperial process of acculturation or the supply with pseudo‐scientific arguments for racial discrimination. The spectrum of these tasks will be outlined in this paper, and the interdependency of German colonial politics and German colonial medicine will be discussed.