A stopover in Tübingen

Institutional reorganisation

After the Second World War the Berlin Workshop for Virus Research was merged with the Max Planck Institute for Virus Research in Tübingen. Some of the staff stayed on. Schramm was one of the founding directors and in 1956 together with Alfred Gierer was finally able to demonstrate the infectious nature of ribonucleic acid.

Melchers, on the other hand, was soon made one of the directors at the Max Planck Institute for Biology, which was also based in Tübingen. He had not lost his interest in the tobacco mosaic virus either.

Thus the virus was at home in two Tübingen institutions at the same time.