“Furor teutonicus and racial hate”

Theodor Billroth’s university-political influence on the nationalization of medicine

In 1867 renowned surgeon Theodor Billroth was appointed to the Second Surgical Clinic of the University of Vienna. His school of surgery became a center of excellence of “German” surgery, represented by the “German” elite. Billroth distanced himself from others who, according to him, did not belong to the German cultural nation. In a culture-critical study, he criticized the Austrian government’s resistance to reform, which permitted an influx of “eastern Jewish” medical students. He demanded a numerus clausus for the study of medicine, which would discriminate against Jewish students. This led to debates in the Imperial Council, criticism from the “Jewish” middle class, and confrontations between “German” and “Jewish” students in the lecture halls. German student associations began excluding Jews based on Billroth’s assessment of them being “a clearly distinct nation; Jews who purely by accident speak German and coincidentally were raised in Germany”.