Starting with the a significant discovery by Emil von Behring that animals inoculated with diphtheria toxin formed defensive substances in their blood serum.

Other scientists principally Jules Bordet tried devising serums against other infectious agents; They found that the precipitins were specific to the antagonist injected.

[4][5][6] In 1915 Uhlenhoth was co-discoverer of Leptospira interrogans strain RGA, a cause of Weil's disease, a severe form of leptospirosis characterized by epistaxis, jaundice, chills, fever, muscle pain, and hepatomegaly, it was one of the many ailments to afflict soldiers involved in the trench warfare of World War I.

The institute was established with financial support from the German Research Council and was led by Uhlenhuth until his death in 1957 at the age of nearly 88.

Wer war was vor und nach 1945 – one of the most respected and reliable sources on the topic of individual Nazi involvement in the Third Reich[10] - in April 1933 Uhlenhuth actively supported the firing of his Jewish colleagues and six years later, in 1939, he joined the ranks of the NSDAP.

Later, the scientist's picture gets even darker: in 1944 Paul Uhlenhuth contacted the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Armed Forces in Nazi Germany) to obtain their consent to carry out medical experiments on non-white prisoners of war.

The latest publications about Uhlenhuth's activities under the Nazi Regime in 1933–1945 led to the renaming of streets honouring his name in both Freiburg and in his hometown of Hannover.