[The surgeon Georg Raeschke (1884-1963)--a German fate]

George Raeschke M. D. is a forgotten famous surgeon, gynaecologist and orthopaedist of the 20th century in Thuringia. His life and work appears as a mirror of the development of surgery and of the political force in Germany--with the rise in the "golden twenties" and the fall in the second world war. The great tragedy of the family Raeschke happened when three from four sons were killed in action at war respectively at the frontier between American and Russian zone. Likewise fateful and negative proved the communist regime in GDR which forbid a private medicine and did not permit to take over the private hospital. Therefore the last son, a surgeon too, fled from GDR. The clinic in Muehlhausen/Thuringia was nationalized, later transformed in a childrens hospital. Today--back in private hand--the building accommodate a home for old people with medical care.