One thing should be fairly obvious

One thing should be fairly obvious. The Nazi murals that once adorned the walls of many buildings have been painted over, whitewashed out.Nobody tells you – indeed, very few local people even know – that Berchtesgaden’s vast station was built by Albert Speer to impress Hitler’s visitors when he greeted guests like Mussolini or the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Nobody cares that the little pizza hut beside the sparkling river Ach was formerly a guard-house, built to protect Hitler from the crowds who thronged to the Berghof to see their F?r at home.Yet there was more. Something else was disturbing me, and it took a couple of days before I could identify it. Everyone in Berchtesgaden – everyone in the whole of Bavaria – is white.

In six days I saw fewer than half a dozen black people (my partner counted four) and nobody – nobody – of mixed race. The Turkish Gastarbeiter who provided slave labour for Germany’s modern industrial miracle were invisible, if they were there at all. Not only that, I saw almost no one from the Indian subcontinent and, apart from a handful of Japanese tourists photographing each other in front of mountain vistas, no Asians either.This part of Germany, brutally “cleansed” in the 1930s and 40s of its mentally or physically handicapped citizens; of Jews, Romanies, Bolsheviks and homosexuals, remains to this day the Aryan homeland Hitler dreamed of creating In six decades, nothing has changed. Only at the recently-opened Dokumentation Obersalzberg – an information centre on the mountainside below where Hitler’s Berghof once stood – is there any mention of the fearful events a few decades ago. With hindsight, this is a powerful reason for feeling ill at ease, above all in Hitler’s personal enclave.How could this utopia have spawned some of the nastiest people and ugliest events in the history of the world? Of all places, why Berchtesgaden?The little town is aware of its shameful past and has, as far as possible, expunged all traces of Nazism. During this busy period he also became president of the RSM (1969-71), the BMA (1970-71) and the International Society of Medicine (1966-70).

In 1972 the Royal College of Nursing made him a Vice-President.In 1973 began another significant chapter in his professional life: he was appointed president of the GMC. Apart from his executive duties, he enjoyed his frequent meetings with ministers, including the redoubtable Barbara Castle. He introduced a limit to occupancy of this presidency and, in accordance with his own legislation, retired in 1980 when he reached the age of 70.Despite his heavy administrative load, Richardson’s clinical career continued unabated, both at St Thomas’ and in his private practice. Common to these gifts and his clinical expertise was an instinctive ability to grasp the fundamental issues in a complex problem. I have already referred to his involvement in the JCC from 1967 to 1972. His main talent, however, lay elsewhere.Although Richardson’s prowess as a clinician was never in doubt, it soon became obvious that he had unusual ability in administration and in committee work. From 1970 to 1974 he was editor-in-chief of the British Encyclopaedia of Medical Practice and he edited three other textbooks.

In the following year, he obtained the MRCP (London), proceeding to FRCP in 1948 and acquiring an MD (Cantab) in 1940.A promising early career in his teaching hospital was interrupted by Second World War service. As a lieutenant-colonel in the RAMC in North Africa in 1943 he attended King George VI For this service he was appointed LVO. While attending the King, he met Harold Macmillan, a meeting that had significant consequences for both men.After the war, he returned to St Thomas’ where, in 1947, he was appointed to the staff as consultant physician, a position he also held at the Watford and District Peace Memorial Hospital and Wembley Hospital. John was educated at Charterhouse, Trinity College, Cambridge, and St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School, where he qualified in 1936, winning the Bristowe Medal and Hadden Prize. John Richardson was a leading figure in many aspects of British medicine in the post-war years. His achievements included presidency of the General Medical Council (GMC), British Medical Association (BMA) and Royal Society of Medicine (RSM). Yet it was his role as chairman of the Joint Consultants Committee (JCC) from 1967 to 1972 that he regarded with particular, and justifiable, pride.He was appointed to the JCC as representative of the Royal College of Physicians, and his talents soon led to his election as its president.