Summary

Andrija Štampar (1888–1958) was one of the leading public health activists in the first half of the twentieth century. In the countries of former Yugoslavia he is remembered as the pivotal public health figure, a man who led the project of building 250 health institutions during his tenure in the Ministry of Public Health (1919–1931). Internationally, historians acknowledge his role as the president of the Interim Commission (1946–1948) in the development of the World Health Organization. This paper will explore a lesser-known side of Štampar, reinterpreting him as a eugenicist concerned with the biological quality of the Yugoslav population in the aftermath of the First World War. I will present his development as a eugenicist through three phases, and provide socioeconomic, scientific and personal contexts that shaped his evolving relationship with eugenics.

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