80-year-old Bartholomäus Lechner from Großhündlbach (municipality of Fraunhofer) made a very special find in his attic: the vaccination certificates of his grandmother Anna, née Lechner, house name Peterbauer, from Auerbach.
Großhündlbach - Lechner's grandmother had seen the light of day in October 1884. The pink vaccination certificate (see photo) shows the first smallpox vaccination within the first year of her life on May 26, 1885. "The gray-green vaccination certificate refers to the repeat vaccination a good ten years later, on May 9, 1896", explains the former farmer to his very own special finds.
Researchers are currently working hard to find a vaccine and medication for the coronavirus. The risk of contracting measles is now higher than it has been for a long time. Since March 2020, parents whose children are being admitted to daycare or school have to prove that they have been vaccinated against measles. The Bundestag decided this with the Measles Protection Act at the beginning of the year. The Federal Association of Children and Adolescent Physicians had been calling for a mandatory vaccination for years.
Many citizens no longer know that there was a compulsory vaccination in the German Reich in 1874. Already in the German Reich in 1874 all Germans were obliged by the Reich vaccination law to have their children vaccinated against smallpox at the age of one and twelve years. In the FRG from 1949 to late 1975, there was a general obligation to vaccinate against smallpox, which continued until the 1980s, restricted to children aged one and twelve. The legal basis for vaccination was still the Reich Vaccination Act of 1874.
This vaccination requirement was discussed in the 1950s because, in the opinion of critics, it violated the right to privacy enshrined in the Basic Law. The Federal Administrative Court ruled in 1959 that the vaccination requirement was compatible with the Basic Law. tom
