Malaria has shaped southern Italy for centuries – with effects that continue to have an impact on social structures, cultural memory and everyday behaviour. Two new research projects at the University of Siegen investigate these long-term consequences and draw comparisons to modern pandemics such as Corona. The focus is on traumatic experiences and the role of science and industry in the fight against malaria during fascism.

In a project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, economic historian PD Dr. Christian Franke and social anthropologist Dr. Lene Faust analyze how the disease has permanently changed politics, literature, urban and landscape planning as well as social practices in southern Italy. Until well into the 20th century, malaria was omnipresent there. In the 1880s alone, according to official statistics, around 20,000 people died every year, and entire regions were considered hardly inhabitable.

The project asks what role traumatic experiences such as the death of relatives or permanent damage to health play and how these experiences continue to have an impact today. Possible long-term effects range from a persistent reluctance towards certain rural landscapes to changed social and economic structures. The researchers see patterns of action triggered by malaria that could also have influenced organized crime structures. Landowners have fled from the disease to the cities and left the management to administrators – a factor in the emergence of parallel structures outside the legal system.

The project combines historical source analysis with socio-anthropological field research and findings from psychological trauma research. It directs the focus from short-term crisis responses to deep cultural and socio-economic traces of epidemics and is intended to provide insights for dealing with future pandemics.

A second project, funded by the Hans and Berthold Finkelstein Foundation of Bayer AG, founded in 2023, sheds light on the development of synthetic antimalarials in the 1920s and 1930s. The focus is on the cooperation between IG Farben/Bayer and fascist Italy in the testing and use of new preparations. The researchers investigate questions of political instrumentalization, economic interests, and the moral responsibility of science and industry, and question established national roles of perpetrators and victims.

Both projects, with a total funding volume of around 430,000 euros, are located at Faculty III (Economics, Business Informatics and Business Law) at the University of Siegen. They combine medical, economic and social history and show how closely medical-ethical questions are intertwined with politics and business.

Editor: X-Press Journalistenbüro GbR

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