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After WWII a politically guided staffing policy foresaw an exchange program for professors from the Soviet Occupation Zone and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In the field of medicine this initiative was not successful. With respect to university psychiatric/neurological hospitals this experiment failed as a result of a shortage of personnel due to the consequences of war, denazification and people migrating into western occupation zones. Criteria for politically selecting promising young talent which had been propagated by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ( Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) were thus not relevant in academic medicine until 1961; however, the communist rulers had great interest in bringing professional and academic resources up to date. Politically implicated representatives in the field were also included in this process. At the forefront was the interest in functioning medical care and education in order to be able to train much needed health professionals. At the end of the 1950s a new generation of professors was established at the university hospitals. This generation rotation demonstrated the politically intended replacement of the 'old' professor generation and the transition to a new GDR generation that had been trained after 1945. This second generation of professors inherited vacant professorships and defined and shaped research and academia until the end of the GDR much more than the previous generation had and also more than the one that followed. The generation of professors continued to feel a strong affiliation with their academic teachers and consequently continued their tradition in the sense of a school, for the most part independent of political circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]