The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) is a German federal government agency and research institute responsible for disease control and prevention. It is located in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

and

Wernigerode Wernigerode () is a town in the district of Harz, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Until 2007, it was the capital of the district of Wernigerode. Its population was 35,041 in 2012. Wernigerode is located southwest of Halberstadt, and is picturesquely s ...

. As an upper federal agency, it is subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Health. It was founded in 1891 and is named for its founding director, the founder of modern bacteriology and Nobel laureate

Robert Koch Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch ( , ; 11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a German physician and microbiologist. As the discoverer of the specific causative agents of deadly infectious diseases including tuberculosis, cholera (though the bacteri ...

Tasks

The Robert Koch Institute monitors

public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...

. Its core tasks include the detection, prevention and combatting of infectious diseases and

non-communicable disease A non-communicable disease (NCD) is a disease that is not transmissible directly from one person to another. NCDs include Parkinson's disease, autoimmune diseases, strokes, most heart diseases, most cancers, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, ...

s in Germany. The institute advises the specialist public and government, e.g. on preventing and tackling infectious disease outbreaks such as the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and the EHEC O104:H4 outbreak in 2011. The institute is also in charge of health monitoring and health reporting in Germany, covering non-communicable diseases: in large monitoring studies, RKI monitors the health status of adults and children in Germany. RKI scientists regularly publish their results in scientific journals and in their own reports, e.g. the "Infectious Disease Epidemiology Annual Report", special reports on different diseases in Germany (influenza, tuberculosis, cancer), "Health in Germany". Apart from that, the Institute publishes several scientific periodicals, such as the monthly "Journal of Health Monitoring", "Epidemiological Bulletin" and the "" (co-publisher). The institute is also home to various National Reference Centres and Consultant Laboratories. Around 15 scientific committees, such as the Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO) and the Commission for Hospital Hygiene and Infection Prevention (KRINKO), are also based at the Robert Koch Institute. RKI staff are involved in various international research projects and programmes, helping to tackle urgent public health problems such as the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2011. RKI also cooperates closely with international partners like the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). The institute hosts two WHO reference laboratories (

polio Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 70% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe s ...

and measles/ rubella) and has been the WHO Collaborating Centre for Emerging Infections and Biological Threats since 2016. RKI is the only federal institute in Germany in the field of human medicine with a BSL-4 laboratory (which was opened in 2015 and has become fully operational in summer 2018).

Location and organisation

The Robert Koch Institute has its headquarters and two additional sites in Berlin (Nordufer, Seestraße, General-Pape-Straße) as well as a site in Wernigerode/Harz region. RKI's focus is on research, some 450 of about 1,100 members of staff are scientists. The institute consists of the following units. * Department for Infectious Diseases * Department for Epidemiology and Health Reporting * Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology * Centre for Biological Threats and Special Pathogens * Centre for International Health Protection * Methodology and Research Infrastructure * Project groups (Immune Defense Mechanisms; Acinetobacter baumanii; Epidemiology of Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms; Epidemiological Modelling of Infectious Diseases; Virulence Factors in Salmonella and Campylobacter) * Junior research groups (Microbial Genomics; Metabolism of Microbial Pathogens) * Staff units (e.g. Global Health and Biosecurity; Genetic Engineering) * Central services (e.g. Human Resources) A museum presenting the life and work of Robert Koch as well as of the institute today is located at the main building at Nordufer site and open to visitors from Monday to Friday. The mausoleum with Robert Koch's remains can also be visited.

History

The institute was formed by the later Nobel Prize laureate

in 1891 as the ''Royal Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases''. Koch lived until the age of 66, when he died of a heart attack in Baden-Baden, on 27 May 1910; his ashes were buried in a mausoleum in his institute on 10 December 1910. The director from 1917 to 1933 was Fred Neufeld who discovered the pneumococcal types. Neufeld's Deputy Director from 1919 to 1933 was Walter Levinthal. During the

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, the Institute took part in atrocities committed in the name of national socialism, such as experiments into

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposure. ...

vaccines at Buchenwald Concentration Camp in 1941, resulting in the deaths of 127 of the 537 inmates involved. The institute was renamed the Robert Koch Institute in 1942. Following the collapse of the Nazi regime, only few scientists ever had to face legal consequences, and their crimes were largely ignored for the remainder of the century. In 1952 the Institute became a subordinate agency of the Federal Health Agency. Following the German reunification in 1990, some former GDR health agencies were (partly) integrated in the Robert Koch Institute. One of them was the Institute for Experimental Epidemiology in Wernigerode/Harz region, which is still an RKI location today. In 1994, the Federal Health Agency was dissolved, and RKI became an independent federal agency within the portfolio of the German Federal Ministry of Health. Two of the former Federal Health Agency's institutes, the Berlin-based AIDS centre and the "Institut für Sozialmedizin und Epidemiologie" (Institute for Social Medicine and Epidemiology), were attached to the Robert Koch Institute. The RKI – which until then was occupied with infectious diseases alone – now had a second big topic: non-communicable diseases and their risk factors. In 2020, the institute was responsible for publishing contact tracing smartphone apps as part of the German government's response to

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

Presidents

Since its inception in 1891, the RKI has had 15 individual presidents. *

(1891–1904) * (1904–1913) *

Friedrich Loeffler Friedrich August Johannes Loeffler (; 24 June 18529 April 1915) was a German bacteriologist at the University of Greifswald. Biography He obtained his M.D. degree from the University of Berlin in 1874. He worked with Robert Koch from 1879 to 1884 ...

(1913–1915) * Fred Neufeld (1915–1933) * (1933–1934) * Richard Otto (1934–1935) * (1935–1945) * (1945–1949) * (1949–1952) * Georg Henneberg (1952–1969) * Hansjürgen Raettig, Karl-Ernst Gillert, Hans Kröger, Wilhelm Weise (board of directors) (1970–1984) * (1985–1990) * Hans Kröger, Joachim Weltz, Hans Hoffmeister (acting) (1990–1996) * (1996–2008) *

Jörg Hacker Jörg Hinrich Hacker (born 13 February 1952) is a German microbiologist. He served as president of the Robert Koch Institute from 2008 to 2010 and of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina from 2010 to 2020. He is the editor-in-chief of the ...

(2008–2010) * (2010–2015) * Lothar H. Wieler (2015–present)

Notable people

(1843–1910), German physician and microbiologist. Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology in 1905. *

Paul Ehrlich Paul Ehrlich (; 14 March 1854 – 20 August 1915) was a Nobel Prize-winning German physician and scientist who worked in the fields of hematology, immunology, and antimicrobial chemotherapy. Among his foremost achievements were finding a cure ...

(1854–1915), Nobel Prize winning physician. *

Emil von Behring Emil von Behring (; Emil Adolf von Behring), born Emil Adolf Behring (15 March 1854 – 31 March 1917), was a German physiologist who received the 1901 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the first one awarded in that field, for his discovery ...

(1854–1917), German physiologist. Received the first Nobel Prize for medicine or physiology in 1901. *

Claus Schilling Claus Karl Schilling (5 July 1871 – 28 May 1946), also recorded as Klaus Schilling, was a German tropical medicine specialist who participated in the Nazi human experiments at the Dachau concentration camp during World War II. Though never a ...

(1871–1946), German experimenter in Nazi human concentration camp experiments executed for war crimes, director of the tropical medicine division at the institute.

References

External links

* (in English) {{Authority control Biosafety level 4 laboratories 1891 establishments in Germany Genetics in Germany Medical research institutes in Germany Microbiology institutes National public health agencies Organizations established in 1891 Public health organizations Robert Koch