Test involving insecticides in the garden of the Swiss Tropical Institute during a course on malaria, 1958.
Test involving insecticides in the garden of the Swiss Tropical Institute during a course on malaria, 1958. Swiss TPH Library, Allschwil

A tropical institute to tackle unemployment

The Swiss Tropical Institute was founded in 1943 out of a fear of post-war unemployment. It was designed to promote the emigration of young people to Africa and the world’s tropical regions.

Gabriel Heim

Gabriel Heim

Gabriel Heim is a book and film author and exhibition organiser. He is principally concerned with research into topics of modern and contemporary history and lives in Basel.

In 1942, the Federal Council and the general public were gripped by fears that unemployment would surge after the war ended. Switzerland was still haunted by the spectre of the 1918 economic crisis. This time, precautions were to be taken in good time to avoid a looming economic slump, as a war-ravaged Europe promised misery and suffering – including for Switzerland. This widely-held belief led policymakers to look for ways of creating jobs, among other for the predicted host of jobless academics. The Federal Council delegate for job creation, Otto Zipfel, therefore asked Swiss universities in October 1942 to come up with projects that would create work and benefit industry, trade and agriculture, and which would also lend themselves to strengthening tourism and exports. The message from Bern was favourably received at the University of Basel. A group of professors immediately set to work to make the case for the establishment of a national tropical health institute in the cosmopolitan city of Basel. In their arguments the team from Basel made it abundantly clear that there could only be one possible location for such a facility in Switzerland – the canton of Basel-Stadt. They argued that the city, with its worldwide missionary network, its renowned chemical and pharmaceutical industries, its leading ethnological museum and its species-rich Zolli (zoo), had excellent connections to the ‘Dark Continent’ (the phrase commonly used to describe Africa at the time) and the Tropics.
Aerial photo of Basel Zoo, 1954.
Aerial photo of Basel Zoo, 1954. e-pics
But that alone was not enough. It wasn’t just about the idea, but about money and job creation. So they drew on hard facts to convince politicians to establish a tropical institute in this landlocked part of the world. The resourceful initiators’ extensive catalogue of criteria initially targeted the expected wave of Swiss nationals who would be willing to leave the country after the war: “Closer economic ties between Switzerland and the Tropics will presumably significantly increase the number of Swiss nationals emigrating there, and the number of Swiss expatriates returning from there.” As the concept also envisaged a tropical medicine training programme and even a tropical medicine clinic, these figures were exaggerated to the project’s advantage: “Due to the war, there are currently huge numbers of people from temperate zones in tropical countries. We can therefore expect an influx of people suffering from tropical diseases in Switzerland, too. On top of that, Switzerland, with its mountain resorts, boasts ideal spa towns for those convalescing from malaria.”
The Tropical Institute (right) and the associated clinic (left) on Basel’s Socinstrasse formed a single unit from 1947.
The Tropical Institute (right) and the associated clinic (left) on Basel’s Socinstrasse formed a single unit from 1947. Swiss TPH Library, Allschwil
Even the bosses of Basel’s industrial firms were brought on board: “An institute of tropical medicine offers the Swiss chemical and pharmaceutical industries new opportunities. This is not just about manufacturing drugs for Europeans with tropical diseases: above all, it means developing new medicines to treat the sick local population. The possibilities in this field are huge, including in the area of tropical pest control. This is a broad, new industrial field for us, and there are high hopes for research in this area.” And not forgetting – so the assumption went – that training in tropical medicine in Basel could mitigate the surplus of physicians in Switzerland: “This would open up a promising field of work for a large number of young Swiss doctors, which could go some way to absorbing the surplus of physicians.”
Advert for training at the Basel Tropical Institute in the newspaper Die Tat, December 1943.
Advert for training at the Basel Tropical Institute in the newspaper Die Tat, December 1943. e-newspaperarchives
The sum of these and other arguments won over the federal authorities, leading immediately to the foundation of a committee in Basel in early 1943. Thanks to close ties with the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, it was able to rely on some influential supporters. From the outset they included zoologist Rudolf Geigy (1902–1995), who devoted all his drive and enthusiasm to the development of the institute as its first head. In early 1944, a three-year ‘probationary period’ was secured, with a federal subsidy and annual grants from the canton. On 17 January 1944, the institute launched its training organisation to promote tropical studies. The first subjects taught at the tropical school were the study of pathogens and carriers of tropical diseases, tropical plants and agriculture, and a course on tropical commodities. There were even lectures on tropical hygiene. In addition to the general preparatory course for emigrants, training programmes were established for prospective planters and chemists in the sugar industry. The broad-based curriculum also covered engine technology, surveying, issues affecting overseas Swiss colonies, termite protection, and the religions of peoples in the Tropics. Only students who were medically classified as ‘fit for the tropics’ were admitted to the programmes, and the qualification enabled graduates to work on coffee, tea, sisal or rubber plantations overseas. The sugar-industry chemists were promised careers as production managers, and the planters as managers of extensive plantations.
View of a lecture hall in the research department, where a general tropical studies course was held in 1947.
View of a lecture hall in the research department, where a general tropical studies course was held in 1947. Swiss TPH Library, Allschwil
Publications from the labour and emigration section at the Federal Office for Industry and Labour (BIGA) show how unwavering the conviction was at the time that Swiss labour market policy could be regulated through emigration. In 1950 the BIGA published a handbook for emigrants, in which the foreword reads: “The citizens of numerous countries have to emigrate so as not to starve in their impoverished, overpopulated homelands. But the Swiss are happy to emigrate. Maybe one day they too will be forced to do so.” For zoologist Rudolf Geigy, however, who liked to call himself a ‘friend of arthropods’, the development of the Tropical Institute was closely linked to research into tropical diseases and their transmission to humans by insects and ticks, besides intensive teaching. In the very first annual report in 1944, he was recorded as saying: “Our whole organisation can only thrive on the basis of active research.”
Rudolf Geigy on his first expedition to Africa, in Brazzaville, 1945.
Rudolf Geigy on his first expedition to Africa, in Brazzaville, 1945. Swiss TPH Library, Allschwil
With this strong belief in mind, Geigy began laying the foundations for extending the outreach of the newly established Tropeli (as the institute was known locally) from Basel to the world. In 1944, he set up the journal of tropical medicine Acta Tropica which achieved instant international renown and – in the middle of the war – planned an initial expedition to Africa with a budget of 50,000 Swiss francs. Although that expedition failed to go ahead, there were soon regular expeditions involving field research on the human transmission of parasitic infections such as malaria, sleeping sickness and bilharzia.
Cover of the journal Acta Tropica, 1944.
Cover of the journal Acta Tropica, 1944. e-periodica
Geigy’s research-based entrepreneurship paved the way for the establishment in 1951 of the Centre suisse de recherches scientifiques in Adiopodoumé in what is now the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, and for the foundation in 1957 – on the invitation of a Swiss missionary order – of the Swiss Tropical Institute Field Laboratory in Ifakara in what is now Tanzania. Both institutions are still closely linked to the work of the modern-day Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. The post-war economic boom quickly put paid to the scenarios that predicted gloomy times ahead for Switzerland in the late 1940s. Not only did the federal government stop encouraging people to emigrate, but the Basel Tropical School, the so promisingly touted tropical clinic and the preparatory courses for living and working in the southern hemisphere lost importance due to a lack of interest. The Swiss Tropical Institute, on the other hand, experienced steady growth thanks to Rudolf Geigy, who shaped the institution for 30 years, and to the foresight of his successors. Today, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, known as Swiss TPH, has 950 members of staff and operates in 130 countries, in keeping with its mission of making the world a healthier place.
A short film on the origins of the Basel Tropical Institute (in German). Swiss TPH Library, Allschwil

Further posts