This paper investigates a little known aspect of the German national stereotype in England: the German doctor as an ambitious scientist and magical healer. This image was widely spread in the literary, political and medical culture as well as in the commercial advertisements of the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. In terms of national stereotyping, the English regarded the Germans as their allies and near-family relations. The German stereotype functioned as an alter ego of the English: the magical qualities were out-sourced from the rational self-image and projected onto the image of the German doctor.
Keywords: stereotypes, quacks, newspapers, public opinion, Anglo-German relations
