Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine

The cholera epidemic of the year 1892 claimed thousands of lives and prompted the Senate and Parliament of the City of Hamburg to reform the health care system.

Contrary to the plans of the bacteriologist Robert Koch, Nocht established Hamburg in 1899 as the location for an institute for the research of tropical diseases, since "due to overseas traffic there are many people with treatment needs at this point".

On 1 October 1900 the "Institute for Maritime and Tropical Diseases" with 24 employees was opened in the former administration building of the naval hospital at Hamburg's Landungsbrücken.

The building wing is located in the St. Pauli district between Bernhard Nocht Street on the high north side and the slope of Davidstreet [de] leading down to the harbor shore.

The buildings of the Regional Centre of the German Weather Service and the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency are located in the course of the road to the east.

For the handling of highly pathogenic viruses and infected insects, the Institute has laboratories of the highest biosafety level (BSL-4) and a BSL-3 insectary.

Recent successes of the institute include the identification and development of a test for the SARS pathogen (Christian Drosten, Stephan Günther [de] 2003), the development of new therapeutic approaches against nematodes, especially in river blindness (Achim Hörauf 1998), on bacteria living symbiotically with the worms, and the clarification of a still missing transitional stage of the malaria pathogen (Merosome, Volker Heussler [de] 2006).

The couple Paul Racz [de] and Klara Tenner-Racz from the Institute's Pathology Department is also known for their achievements in AIDS research.

The first chairman of the board was the physician Rolf Horstmann, who had headed the Department of Tropical Medicine Basic Research at the BNITM since 1998.