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“Not Even the Highest Wall Can Stop AIDS”: Expertise and Viral Politics at the German-German Border

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2023

Johanna Folland
Johanna Folland*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
*
Email: folland@umich.edu
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Abstract

This article explores East German responses to HIV/AIDS and the emergence of sex as a site of border insecurity in the imagination of the East German state in the mid-1980s. Existing histories often dismiss the East German response to HIV/AIDS as ineffective or negligible on account of its illiberalism and insularity. These narratives, however, ignore the tense debates and wide variety of state and activist responses to the AIDS epidemic that developed within the GDR over the course of its final decade. I argue that as scientists and health officials sought to integrate East German institutions into the “global AIDS community,” the specter of African sexuality loomed larger in their characterizations of this epidemiological threat (notably, in ways that do not neatly correlate with rates of HIV prevalence in the GDR). Explanations of East German AIDS policy should therefore focus less on the GDR's illiberalism and more on its liberalization—that is, its entrance in the mid-1980s into a global moral economy of AIDS that elided and disincentivized socialist commitments to the Global South.

Keywords

HIV/AIDSEast Germanyracesexualityborderspublic healthinternational health cooperation
Type
Article
Information
Central European History , Volume 56 , Special Issue 2: Bordering the GDR: Everyday Transnationalism, Global Entanglements and Regimes of Mobility at the Edges of East Germany , June 2023 , pp. 255 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Central European History Society of the American Historical Association

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References

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35 “Vormerk über eine Information des Leiters der Abteilung Warschauer Vertrag des MID, Gen. Popow, gegenüber Vertretern der Botschaften der Staaten des Warschauer Vertrages am 28.8.1987,” BArch DQ117/20.

36 Gedächtnisnotiz über die Tagung der Vertreter der Ministerien für Gesundheitswesen sozialistischer Länder zur Vorbereitung der 40. Weltgesundheitsversammlung, Mai 1987,” BArch DQ117/20.

37 “Niederschrift über die am 24.11.1987 an der Medizinischen Fachschule Quedlinburg durchgeführte Beratung zur 6-monatigen Weiterbildung 22 mittlerer medizinischer Kader,” December 11, 1987, BArch DQ1/12723.

38 Mecklinger, “Betr.: Dringender Verdacht auf eine Infektion an AIDS bei einem in der DDR weilenden Bürger aus der Republik Sambia,” October 16, 1985, BArch DQ1/12723.

39 Schneidewind (letter template), “Betr.: Betreuung ausländischer Patienten,” August 1, 1986, BArch DQ1/13083.

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42 See correspondence between Ministry of Health and school authorities in BArch DQ1/12723.

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44 Helmut Theodor, “Protokoll über einen operativen Einsatz (Theodor, Pöhle) am 16.2.1988 in Quedlinburg zur Problematik der Feststellung von HIV-Trägern unter in der DDR weilenden Bürgern aus Uganda,” February 23, 1988, BArch DQ 1/13082.

45 “Information über den Stand der Verhütung und Bekämpfung von AIDS-Infektionen in der DDR,” 11.

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47 Heidorn to Außerordentlicher und Bevollmächtiger Botschafter der Volksdemokratischen Republik Äthiopien, December 22, 1988, BArch DQ1/12723; compare “Ermittlungen,” May 26, 1987, BArch DQ1/12723.

48 “Vermerk über ein Gespräch mit Dr. Lucia Barquet, WHO-Kader AIDS-Programm und verantwortlicher Mitarbeiter für die HIV-Untersuchungen moçambikanischer Werktätiger, die in die DDR reisen, am 31.10.1988,” March 8, 1989, BArch DQ/14889.

49 “Ermittlungen,” May 26, 1987, BArch DQ1/12723; Fischer, Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, to Mecklinger, Ministerium für Gesundheitswesen, July 31, 1989, BArch DQ1/12723.

50 Mecklinger to Hager, December 27, 1988, BArch DQ1/12723.

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53 Due especially to the skin ailments associated with syphilis, treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) was strongly associated with the discipline of dermatology in the West until around the 1950s, when the availability of penicillin made syphilis easier to treat. Institutional associations between dermatology and sexual health persisted in the Eastern bloc, which is why responding to HIV/AIDS fell within the purview of the Head of Dermatology at Charité Hospital; see Poonawalla, Tasneem, Uchida, Tatsuo, and Diven, Dayna G., “Dermatology's Role in Treating Sexually Transmitted Diseases,” Archives of Dermatology 142, no. 9 (September 1, 2006): 1231–44CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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57 Prorector (Bereich Medizin), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, to Rudi Müller, Stellvertreter d. Ministers, Ministerium für Gesundheitswesen, May 15, 1986, BArch DQ117/20.

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70 See, for example, “International AIDS Society to George Bush,” April 3, 1990, San Francisco General Hospital, Ward 84/86 Records, MSS 94-61, Special Collections, UCSF Library and Center for Knowledge Management, University of California, San Francisco.

71 See Baldwin, Disease and Democracy.

72 “Information über den Stand der Verhütung und Bekämpfung von AIDS-Infektionen in der DDR,” 8.

73 Dittmann, “Kurzbericht über die Teilnahme am Welttreffen der Minister für Gesundheitswesen zu Programmen der AIDS-Verhütung, London, 26.–28.1.1988,” BArch DQ1/12718.

74 Those numbers were: 1,611 physicians and scientists attending conferences in nonsocialist countries and 1,770 in socialist countries; “Jahresanalyse 1988: Teilnahme von Wissenschaftlern der DDR an medizinisch-wissenschaftlichen Veranstaltungen im Ausland,” March 22, 1989, BArch DQ1/12125.