[Carl Posner (1854-1928) : A founder of urology and sexology in Germany]

[Early origins of a physician specializing in sexual medicine from the urological perspective : Max Marcuse (1877-1963)-"physician for skin and urinary diseases"]

The development of sexual medicine starts in Europe in parallel to the evolving clinical specialties urology, venerology, gynecology, neurology/psychiatry, and internal medicine at the end of the 19th century in Berlin. For this reason, we find many examples of fruitful collaboration but also in segregation from each other in defining the new specialties. Max Marcuse, the only one of the well-known Berlin specialists Ivan Bloch, Magnus Hirschfeld, and Albert Moll to survive the Holocaust, was able to publish articles in Palestine and Israel from the 1930s to the 1960s. This year is the 60th anniversary of his death.

[Granting of venia legendi as an indicator of specialization : Victor von Ivánchich de Margita (1812-1892) "Lecturer for surgery of the urogenital organs" in Vienna in 1851]

Alongside Paris, Vienna was one of the early centers of specialization and professionalization in medicine and urology in the 19th century. Especially the 2nd Vienna Medical School (Erna Lesky) with its main representatives Carl Freiherr von Rokitansky (in Czech: Karel Rokytanský; 1804-1878) and Joseph Ritter von Škoda (1895-1881) was able to create the perfect scientific environment for young students to become acquainted with new fields of research often in an interdisciplinary setting, e.g., chemistry, microscopy or pathology in combination with clinical departments like surgery. We analyze the process of habilitation using the example of a urologist to outline this process within the history of science.

[Why in Koenigsberg, why Samuel Jessner, why 1921? : History of the first university lectureship for sexology in Germany]

The dermatologist and venerologist Samuel Jessner (1895-1929) received a lectureship for sexology at the University of Koenigsberg (today: Russian Калининград, Kaliningrad) in 1921. Since 1928 he was also listed as a urologist in the Reichsmedizinalkalender (German Physician Address Calendar). In this article we trace his life and work and ask how Jessner was able to achieve this academic success in the periphery of German sexology and without close ties to its networks. His weak influence in research, his lack of connection to a "school" of sexual science in German-speaking countries, and his Jewish origin were factors that impaired both the recognition of his work among his contemporaries and his recognition in the discipline-specific historiography until today.

["Rohleder was one of the first to fully realize the importance of sexology." : Life and work of the venereologist, urologist, and sexologist Hermann Rohleder (1866-1934)]

His contemporaries described Hermann Rohleder, a physician from Leipzig, as a pioneer of sexual medicine. His career led him from treating patients with venereal diseases to urology and sexology. Rohleder worked for the institutionalization of sexology in Germany, but his attempts to establish a professorship at the University of Leipzig remained unsuccessful. Rohleder's life and work illustrate how closely the disciplines of urology and sexology were connected in the early 20th century.

[History of epidemics in urology in German-speaking countries]

Pandemics are relevant for many fields of medicine from microbiology to economics and epidemiology. Many medical specialties which developed during the 19th century, e. g., urology, have had much impact on diagnostics and therapy, such as during the treatment of tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases. For some of them, including urology, treatment of, for example, sexually transmitted diseases, was constitutional and differed between countries.

[Medicine and literature: "Nobel Prize. No jokes please!" : Gottfried Benn and his nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature]

In the early 1950s, the German poet and physician Gottfried Benn was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Drawing on sources from the archive of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, this essay discusses how Benn was portrayed as a Nobel nominee. His sponsors highlighted not only why he was a remarkable author, but also his national socialist links during the 1930s. The study is part of a new interdisciplinary project that analyses nominations and committee reports for physician and natural scientist candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1901 to 1970.

[On the occasion of the 70th congress of the German Society of Urology : Examples of networks and think tanks at its founding in 1906/1907 and further developments]

The German Society of Urology was founded in 1906/1907 with a historical background starting in 1896 shortly after the death of Maximilian Nitze, the "inventor" of the cystoscope. This reflects the end of the first phase in the establishment of modern scientific urology as a specialty of its own within German-speaking countries (Imperial Germany, the Austria-Hungary Empire and Switzerland). Supported by German emigrants, the international orientation of German urology and networks was important during this time period. After WWI and WWII and Nazi atrocities, it took time to rebuild these relationships and exchanges from the 1960s to the 1990s-first within the former East and West Germany and then with European countries and the USA. From the 1990s onwards, the society continued to bridge borders behind the Iron Curtain.