Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945

Orientalizing Disease. Austro-Hungarian Policies of ‘Race,’ Gender and Hygiene in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1874–1914

58 Brigitte Fuchs niak” nation was a crucial concern for the Austro-Hungarian authorities in the former Ottoman province “Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Spaits described the historical fact of the conversion to Islam by one section of the “nation” using phrases such as “spinelessness,” “weakness” and “degeneration” which, as will be demonstrated, also shaped AustroHungarian medical discourses on Bosnia. As a result of skilled diplomacy, Austria-Hungary was able to implement its expansion plans for the Balkans by occupying Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878/9, first as a territory that it administrated but whose sovereign was still formally the Ottoman Sultan, then eventually annexing it in 1908. These colonial acts were legitimized as Austria-Hungary’s “civilizing mission” [Kulturmission] in a former Ottoman province which was without doubt both socially and economically one of the least developed parts of Europe. However, the Austro-Hungarian occupiers’ description of Bosnia as “primitive” was primarily due to the lack of a public health and hygiene system. In the course of the occupation , Austro-Hungarian health officers had already noted a state of general “degeneration” in the Bosnian population, urgently demanding the implementation of a modern public health regime in order to combat the poor state of health.3 The introduction of Austro-Hungarian public health and hygiene policies in Bosnia could be considered as examples of what scholars—following Foucault—have termed modern Western biopolitics.4 As Balibar and others have demonstrated, biopolitics gained momentum after the 1880s, characterized increasingly by state intervention into the “female” private sphere.5 In this context, women as child-bearers became specific subjects of biopolitical discourses and practices, as Western governments moved 3 See Dr Spanner, “Die sanitären Verhältnisse der Hauptstadt Mostar seit der Occupation der Herzegowina bis Ende des Jahres 1879,” Der Militärärzt 14 (1880): 161–163 and 169–171; Dr Schorr, “Aus meiner Praxis im Sandschak Novi-Bazar,” Der Militärarzt 15 (1881): 90–93; Dr Ulmer, “Von den sanitären Verhältnissen der Truppe im Okkupationsgebiete,” Der Militärarzt 18 (1884): 121–124, 127–129 and 131–133. Whereas Austro -Hungarian health officers judged the “sanitary condition” of Bosnia and Herzegovina negatively, the official journal of the Austrian supreme public health administration (at the Ministry of the Interior) reported that generally, the Bosnians were of extraordinary good health. See “Die sanitären Verhältnisse in Bosnien und der Hercegovina,” Das österreichische Sanitätswesen. Organ für die Publicationen des k.k. Obersten Sanit ätsrates 1 (1889): 71. 4 Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended.” Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76 (London: Penguin Press, 2003), 239–264. 5 Etienne Balibar, “The Nation Form: History and Ideology,” in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso, 1991), 86–106. 59 Orientalizing Disease to “improve” the quantity and quality of their populations, both in central and in more marginal and colonial settings.6 Such measures and discourses of public health and welfare were not only gendered, but also aimed at specific population groups. Therefore, the questions must be raised about how precisely certain social classes, ethnicities or religious communities were affected, with the final consequence being social segregation along medically defined lines.7 Initially, the focus here will be on Austro-Hungarian anthropological and medical discourses on the “nature” and physical quality of the Bosnian population . Emphasis will be placed on a description of the establishment of a public health regime, in addition to discourses on combating endemic and epidemic diseases developed against a background of contemporary Orientalist and Balkanizing discourses8 on degeneration, in particular, the “syphilitic ” degeneration of the Bosnians. Austro-Hungarian campaigns to combat syphilis and to foster hygiene will also be investigated, especially the involvement of female physicians, who not only medicated Bosnian Muslim women but contributed more widely to changing attitudes towards gender differences. Finally, the focus will shift to the emancipation campaign of Austro-Hungarian female physicians which, as will be demonstrated, was based heavily on Orientalist stereotyping and was largely in an attempt to raise feminist awareness in the capitals of the Empire, rather than in Bosnia. Narratives on Bosnian ‘Bones’ and ‘Bosniak Nationality’ In the course of the nineteenth century, the Porte gradually lost grip over Bosnia, and its efforts to modernize the Ottoman state were met with great hostility from Bosnian Muslim land holders fearing a loss of privileges, culminating in a rebellions against Ottoman rule. An...