[Public health service in the Weimar Republic and in the early history of West Germany].

The historical period of the Weimar Republik has to be looked upon as the blossom time of municipal public health care under the influence of the theory of social hygiene. This leading theory originated from the idea of a social policy and a social medicine worked out during the German revolution of 1848. Its theoretical foundation as a social science was laid by Alfred Grotjahn in the years before 1914. The article describes the practical transformation of this theory in municipal public health care during the twenties, using the capital Berlin as an example. It is shown how racial hygiene influenced this process. In 1933 the idea of racial hygiene became dominant and the progressive representatives of social hygiene either had to emigrate or they were eliminated by the Nazis. After 1945 this double break in continuity caused considerable difficulties in the practical reorganization as well as in the theoretical reorientation of public health care.