Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung Conference

Kateřina presented a paper titled “Making marriage healthy or equal? Political authority and expertise at the time of regime change in late 1940s Czechoslovakia” focusing on expert debates that affected women’s standing as wives and mothers. Zooming in on health and specifically premarital certificates, she demonstrated how restrictive eugenic approaches survived the democratic First Czechoslovak Republic and World War II and were only displaced by the totalitarian communist government. She argued that political priorities significantly impact the expertise produced under the auspices of various political parties, and specifically after a regime change.

Natalia Jarska presented a paper "Marriage, health, and expertise. Debates on compulsory premarital medical examination in postwar Poland (1940s – 1960s)," in which she explored two debates on a premarital medical examination that took place in postwar Poland: immediately after the end of WWII and in the early 1960s. She discussed the arguments presented by experts of different disciplines and their influence on the decision-making process.

Markus Wahl presented a paper "Political change, predicaments, and epidemics. Medical expertise and authority in postwar East Germany," in which he examined the decisive turning point in the Soviet Occupied Zone (1945-1949) and the young German Democratic Republic (1949-1953) and discussed the mutual dependency of urgently needed medical expertise and the new political agenda to establish an egalitarian and socialist society on German soil.

Andrea Bělehradová presented a paper "Indestructible Venus and Vulnerable Man: Ageing Sexuality in Czechoslovak Expert Knowledge during State Socialism," in which she analysed the changes in the understanding of post-reproductive sexuality during state socialism in Czechoslovakia. She focused on gynaecologists and their treatment of climacteric women as well and sexologists and their dealing with sexually deviant elderly men.