Hans Martin Sutermeister

Hans Martin Sutermeister (1907 to 1977) was a Swiss physician, medical writer, politician and activist against miscarriages of justice, who also wrote under the pen name Hans Moehrlen. The son of a minister, he studied theology in Germany before switching to medicine at the University of Basel. During the Second World War he worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia and as a physician at the Swiss border, and in 1945 he opened a family medical practice in Bern. He was especially interested in psychosomatic medicine and music psychology, and he submitted post-doctoral theses to the University of Bern on changing perceptions of disease, on laughter and crying, and on Schiller as a physician. His bid for a teaching licence in the history of medicine was rejected. He later entered politics in the canton of Bern as a member of the Ring of Independents and directed the schools of the city of Bern.