[Development and popularization of medical breastfeeding recommendations in twentieth-century Germany]

Breastfeeding is considered to be the key variable for infant health. Consequently, UNICEF and the World Health Organization promote the beginning of breastfeeding within the first hour after birth and recommend to exclusively breastfeed the infant during the first six months. The origins of these modern breastfeeding campaigns can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Whereas high infant mortality rates traditionally were considered to be a matter of fate, declining birth rates towards the end of the nineteenth century raised fears about the nation's future and led to the emergence of an increasing infant welfare movement in Imperial Germany. As low breastfeeding rates were identified as a key factor behind the high infant mortality rates, the main objective of the infant care movement was to increase breastfeeding. The paper, therefore, focuses on medical breastfeeding recommendations and the attempts to popularize breastfeeding. At first, a sketch of medical doctrines will be presented, followed by a short survey of popular parental guidelines. Finally, two famous manuals of infant raising from the early twentieth century will be analysed in more detail. On the whole, the paper covers the period from the beginnings of social paediatrics at the beginning of the 20th century, the nutrition recommendations embedded into Nazi ideology during the Third Reich, until the declining breastfeeding ratios and the "feeding on demand"-movement in the 1970s as well as the ideological differences between West and East Germany during the Cold War.