The first nationwide compulsory vaccination in Germany
Smallpox is a highly contagious and life-threatening infectious disease that kills around 30% of untreated cases. Whilst rudimentary smallpox vaccinations administered in China during the Middle Ages had reduced the mortality rate from the disease to around 2%, the first modern vaccinations using human smallpox viruses were carried out in 18th-century Europe. The breakthrough was made in 1796 by Englishman Edward Jenner, who developed a smallpox vaccination using cowpox.
Although the technology of smallpox vaccinations had thus been established by the 1870s, the new German state did not move to initiate a nation-wide programme of immunization, and a major smallpox epidemic triggered by the Franco-Prussian War claimed more than 180,000 lives between 1870 and 1873. Reacting to this high loss of life, the Reichstag mandated compulsory vaccination against smallpox for all German children through the Imperial Vaccination Act passed on 8 April 1874. In 1979, the World Health Organization declared that the smallpox virus had been eradicated.
About the Deutschlandmuseum
An immersive and innovative experience museum about 2000 years of German history
The whole year at a glance
