Bruno Gebhard (1899-1985), was a leader in public health education in Germany and the U.S., and served as the first Director of the Cleveland Health Museum. Born in Rostock, Germany, he studied medicine there, where his father was a hospital administrator. Gebhard completed his studies in Berlin and Munich, receiving his medical degree in 1925. Although Gebhard's internships were in pathology and pediatrics, his real interest lay in public health, and he served as curator of the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden from 1927 until 1935. In 1937 he and his wife Gertrude Herrmann Gebhard fled Germany. Invited to the U.S. by the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation to plan design health exhibits, Gebhard established health museums at hospitals in Philadelphia and Reading, Pennsylvania. He also planned and designed the health exhibit at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. At the same time, he developed future plans for the Cleveland Health Museum, coming to Cleveland in the summer of 1940 to prepare for the museum's November 1940 opening. As director of the first permanent health museum in the country, Gebhard practiced his philosophy of educating museum visitors by direct participation in exhibits.
Gebhard was the author of numerous articles in professional journals concerning family life, education, and geriatrics as well as museum planning and management. After his retirement as director of the museum in 1965, he continued as a consultant, residing in Shaker Heights until his wife died in 1975. He then moved to California where he died. Gebhard was survived by daughters Ursula Fink of Rye, N.Y. and Suzanna Goodman of Roosevelt Island, New York.
Gebhard’s politics
Growing up in wartime Germany, and witnessing social upheaval following the end of World War I, Bruno Gebhard was essentially a pacifist. Raised a Lutheran, he also participated in Quaker relief efforts. More important, he was a man of science and devoted himself to a medial career in which he could help others.
In 1928 Gebhard joined the Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD), the main non-revolutionary left-wing party of the German parliament, or Reichstag. This party fared best among non-Catholic workers as well as intellectuals favoring socially progressive causes and increased economic equality. On March 23, 1933 the Social Democratic Party voted against the Enabling Act, which empowered the cabinet under Adolf Hitler to enact laws without participation of the Reichstag. As such, the Social Democrats were the only party that voted against the Enabling Act, and the Nazis retaliated by banning the party on July 14, 1933, effectively eliminating the last vestige of opposition in government.
Gebhard refused to join the Nazi party, even though it would have safeguarded his job and advanced his career. Co-workers at the Deutsches Hygiene Museum joined the Nazi Party, as did Gebhard’s own father and other relatives.
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