The 2015 Austrian-Swiss-German Fellowship Report.

The History of the Austrian-Swiss-German Traveling Fellowship The Austrian-Swiss-German (ASG) Traveling Fellowship was established in 1979; Karl Zweymüller from Austria, Alex Staubli from Switzerland, and Günter Janssen and Udo Rodegerdts from Germany were the first fellows chosen by their respective national societies to travel to different renowned centers in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. The willingness to provide an opportunity to share research ideas, surgical techniques, and knowledge of orthopaedic surgery and traumatology, and to forge a closer relationship with the Anglo-American orthopaedic community, had been in consideration for some time, but it was at the end of 1974 at the German Orthopaedic and Traumatology Meeting (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Orthopädie und Traumatologie [DGOT]) that closer attention was paid to the project. At that time, the American-British-Canadian (ABC) Fellowship, founded in 1948, was a well-established traveling fellowship and served as a trigger for the ASG Fellowship. Representing each national orthopaedic society, Franz Endler from Austria, Emil Morscher from Switzerland, and Lothar Henkel from Germany determined the rules that were accepted during the DGOT Meeting in Baden-Baden on May 3, 1975. Since 1984, the American Orthopaedic Association (AOA) has been assisting with the organization of the Fellowship, after approval of a formal request by Hans Mau, then Chairman of the ASG Fellowship Commission and “father” of the ASG fellows. In 1984, the AOA incorporated the ASG Fellowship with their “Emerging Leader Program,” and founded a reciprocal tour that enabled American surgeons to visit prominent orthopaedic centers in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. In 1998, J. Larry Marsh and Michael J. Yaszemski were the first ASG traveling fellows from the U.S. Today, the fellowship is organized biennially and usually occurs over a period of 5 to 6 weeks, with 1 week in the U.K. (either before or after the North American tour), and incorporates attendance at the annual AOA meeting.