The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Pneumologie und Beatmungsmedizin (DGP, "German Respiratory Society") is the largest and oldest medical professional organization for respiratory disorders in the German-speaking world and serves as a forum for all medical practitioners and scientists in the field of respiratory medicine. Almost 28% of the more than 3,000 members are women. Pneumologie has been the official journal of the German Respiratory Society since 1981.
Mission The DGP seeks "to promote the study, research and teaching, training and continuing education, prevention, care and rehabilitation in the field of respiratory medicine, including intensive care medicine with the focus on mechanical ventilatory support".Statutes of the German Respiratory Society , as of 19 March 2010 (retrieved 26 August 2013). It promotes "cooperation between medical and allied professional groups" within the field, represents the interests of the field in the public domain and works closely with "other bodies and professional associations".Statutes of the German Respiratory Society , as of 19 March 2010 (retrieved 26 August 2013). The DGP's activities include organizing congresses for professionals in the field of respiratory medicine, issuing guidelines and statements and promoting young doctors and researchers as well as allied health professionals. Besides improving standards of medical education at the university level as well as of specialist postgraduate training, the society focuses on improving the standard of information and preventative measures in respect of all aspects of respiratory health.
Annual congress The annual congress of the DGP is its key event and is organized by a congress president elected for this purpose and a programme commission, who plan the congress in conjunction with the scientific sections of the DGP. In recent years, more than 3,000 people have attended the annual DGP congresses (record figure: 3,500 in 2011). Since 2009 e-posters and other presentations have been available online.Publikationen (retrieved 26 August 2013). Apart from presentations on specialized topics and the educational postgraduate programme, the supplementary programme includes the so-called Lung Run.
Awards The award ceremonies of two of the DGP’s partner institutions take place during the annual congress. The Deutsche Lungenstiftung e.V. ("German Lung Foundation") awards prizes for a doctoral thesis and for secondary-school creativity as well as the Wilhelm and Ingeborg Roloff Prize for media reporting on respiratory health. The Deutsche Atemwegsliga e.V. ("German Airway League") awards a research scholarship in clinical respiratory medicine.Preise (retrieved 26. August 2013). In 2009 the DGP introduced two annual research prizes, one for basic scientific research and one for clinical research, each worth €10,000, which are also awarded at the annual congress.
Cooperations In compliance with the educational and awareness-raising mission laid down in its statutes, the Society promotes cooperation with professional and specialist organizations with similar objectives, including the Deutsche Atemwegsliga e.V. (DAL), the Deutsche Lungenstiftung e.V. (DLS), the Deutsches Zentralkomitee zur Bekämpfung der Tuberkulose e.V. (DZK, "German Central Committee against Tuberculosis") and the Bundesverband der Pneumologen ("Federal Association of Pneumologists").Deutsche Gesellschaft für Pneumologie und Beatmungsmedizin (ed.): 100 Jahre DGP – 100 Jahre deutsche Pneumologie. Springer, Heidelberg 2010, pp. 150–157. The DGP is also the co-founder of initiatives such as the Deutscher Lungentag ("German Lung Day"), the Institut für Lungenforschung (ILF, "Institute for Lung Research") and the Aktionsbündnis Nichtrauchen e.V. (ABNR, the "Alliance for Non-smoking"). The DGP also successfully pushed for the creation of the Deutsches Zentrum für Lungenforschung (DZL, "German Centre for Lung Research"), an association initiated by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) that brings together scientists working in lung research in Germany inside and outside the universities.W. Seeger, T. Welte, O. Eickelberg, M. Mall, K.-F. Rabe, B. Keller, S. Winkler, U. Koller: Das Deutsche Zentrum für Lungenforschung – Translationale Forschung für Prävention, Diagnose und Therapie von Atemwegserkrankungen. In: Pneumologie. 66, 2012, , pp. 464–469. The DGP also organizes concerted actions to promote pulmonary research, strengthen the position of respiratory medicine in medical education and training and to lobby politicians and parties for e.g. the protection of non-smokers. The DGP maintains close relations with international organizations such as the European Respiratory Society (ERS), the Union Européenne des Médicins Spécialistes (UEMS), the American Lung Association, the American Thoracic Society, the American College of Chest Physicians, the British Thoracic Society and the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases. The DGP participates as an organization in projects of these bodies, and individual DGP members have fulfilled and continue to fulfil important functions, for instance the publication of the European Lung White Book of the ERS (2nd edition 2013) or the ERS HERMES programme (Harmonized Education in Respiratory Medicine for European Specialists).
Improving education and training Since its foundation, the DGP has focused on the development of pneumology as an independent medical speciality, including teaching medical students as well as specialist training and post-graduate education and training, as well as on the establishment of more autonomous respiratory medicine departments in university hospitals. To facilitate the start of young physicians interested in respiratory medicine, the DGP has established a forum, the working group for promoting junior doctors and researchers, as well as a training academy, the Respiratory Medicine Training Academy, that organizes its own educational and scientific programme and runs a dedicated website for young pneumology professionals.Das Portal für werdende Pneumologen (retrieved 26 August 2013). To ensure that Germany does not fall behind international developments in the specialty, the DGP proactively encourages greater emphasis on teaching of respiratory medicine to medical students and the creation of separate university professorships in pneumology.K.-F. Rabe: The Year of the Lung – Das Jubiläumsjahr der DGP. In: Pneumologie. Band 64, 2010, , p. 534.
History
Early years: 1910–1933
The roots of the DGP go back to the Vereinigung der Lungenheilanstaltsärzte ("Association of Tuberculosis Sanatorium Physicians") founded by, among others, Ludolph Brauer (1865–1951) in 1910. In 1920 it formed a working alliance with the Deutsche Gesellschaft der Tuberkuloseärzte ("German Society of Tuberculosis Physicians"), and in 1925 the two organizations merged to form the Deutsche Tuberkulose-Gesellschaft (DTG – "German Tuberculosis Society"). At the beginning of the twentieth century tuberculosis was the second most common cause of death in Germany. Since the nineteenth century the disease had been a regular topic in medical diagnostics and therapy. Factors such as the publicity given to tuberculosis at congresses of the German Society of Internal Medicine (DGIM), the discovery of the bacillus that caused tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) by Robert Koch in 1882, the popularization of the sanatorium movement in Germany by Peter Dettweiler from 1892 onwards and the foundation of the predecessor of the DZK (1895) were milestones in the fight against the disease. The key principle was not so much the promotion of specialized research activities as an interdisciplinary approach to "gather together the knowledge of tuberculosis scattered and hidden in all the different disciplines".Julius-E. Kayser-Petersen: Vorwort. In: Verhandlungen der Deutschen Tuberkulose-Gesellschaft. Bericht über die 1. Tagung am 28. und 29. Mai 1926, p. 198. The official celebration of the founding of the DTG took place in Danzig in 1925 on the occasion of a joint meeting of the coalition of the tuberculosis sanatorium physicians and the tuberculosis public health specialists under the chairmanship of Otto Ziegler (1879–1931), medical director of the Heidehaus Sanatorium. The DPG explicitly made a point of working not only with physicians, but also with "representatives of the medical sciences (in particular universities)".O. Ziegler: Eröffnungsrede. In: Verhandlungen der Deutschen Tuberkulose-Gesellschaft. Bericht über die 1. Tagung am 28. und 29. Mai 1926, p. 217. It hoped that greater cooperation at both the medical level – a "unanimous collaboration between care institutions, sanatoria and clinics"Deutsche Gesellschaft für Pneumologie und Beatmungsmedizin (ed.): 100 Jahre DGP – 100 Jahre deutsche Pneumologie. Springer, Heidelberg 2010, , p. 21. – and at the level of political parties and organizations would send a clear message to the authorities and the general public. It also emphasized the significance of phthisiology, the forerunner of pneumology, as a separate medical speciality. Among the founders of the DTG were renowned tuberculosis specialists such as Ludolph Brauer, Otto Ziegler, Franz Redeker, Johannes Ritter, Oskar Pischinger and Ernst von Romberg and surgeons such as Ferdinand Sauerbruch. Initially, activities focused on DTG meetings, the detailed minutes ("proceedings") of which appeared in Beiträge zur Klinik der Tuberkulose ("Contributions to the Clinic for Tuberculosis") published by Ludolph Brauer.
Nazi era: 1933–1945 As managing director from 1925 to 1945, Julius E. Kayser-Petersen (1886–1954) not only played a central role in the DTG, but as secretary-general of the Reichs-Tuberkulose-Ausschuss ("National Committee on Tuberculosis") and other key positions influenced the tuberculosis policy of the Nazi regime. Under Kayser-Petersen's leadership, membership of the DTG rose rapidly from 379 in 1925 to more than 1,000 in 1941. The DTG's main activity was organizing the congresses, at least up to 1941, when they were suspended due to the war. Conference topics in this period included the inheritability of tuberculosis (TB), tuberculosis sufferers' "suitability for work and marriage" and the possibility of giving them a special status ("compulsory detention").
The dangers of smoking, which Fritz Lickint (1898–1960) convincingly proved in case studies in the 1920s, and the anti-tobacco campaign of Nazi Germany, culminated in the recommendation of a complete ban on smoking in all tuberculosis sanatoria and clinics in 1939.
During the Nazi era, TB was no longer seen as a disease of the poor; it was suddenly considered a sign of a person's "asocial" nature. Nazi politicians had proclaimed that it was every German citizen's "duty to be healthy", and being ill became tantamount a "dereliction of duty" and a "failure". TB sufferers who were regarded as being "incurable" and "recalcitrant" were stigmatised as being "asocial bacillus spreaders" who had to be dealt with using "compulsory measures". The Nazi ideology saw them as being worthless to the "Aryan German people's community"; they were socially neglected, sometimes systematically starved and even singled out to be murdered in euthanasia centres and concentration camps. Doctors (among them GRS members) took part.Pulmonary Medicine during National Socialism, page 26-53 (PDF)
In 2018, the GRS published a book about the role of the GRS during the Nazi era. They also published an abridged version in English.Pulmonary Medicine during National Socialism (PDF, 37 p)
Postwar period: since 1947
The DTG was dissolved in 1945, and congresses resumed only in 1947 after the Society was re-established under the chairmanship of Franz Ickert (1883–1954).