Germany 2010 Friedrich Loeffler Institute 100th Anniversary

This stamp commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute (FLI), Germany's national research centre for animal health. The institute is the world's oldest research centre for virology and is located on the Isle of Riems, in the Bay of Greifswald at the edge of the Baltic Sea. It is founded in 1910, and named after Friedrich Loeffler. From the outset the FLI worked on veterinary important infectious diseases; besides the foot and mouth disease, more animal diseases such as swine fever, avian influenza and rabies were quickly included in the research. After German reunification, it expanded to a national research centre with multiple locations. Today it is directly under the German Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection. Its research work include animal viral disease and other related subjects like molecular biology, virus diagnosis, immunology, and epidemiology.


View Larger Map


Friedrich Loeffler, featured on the stamp, studied under Robert Koch, and started his research 10 October 1910 on the Isle of Riems, studying the foot and mouth disease, of which the agent was the first animal pathogenic virus to be identified, by Loeffler himself in 1898.

The stamp also features modern day structural depiction of a flu-virus, and a microscope on a background of bacterial culture.