"Morbus Albanensis"

Prepared by: Mendrit Shehu

"When I saw that place, I was amazed by the high mountains and the nobility of the people." This sentence has been repeated for centuries. Travellers, diplomats, sometimes spies and agents, marveled at the state of a country so far removed from the bustle of worldly metropolises and luxuries that it offered nothing but the pleasures of the beginning.

"Morbus Albanensis", the expression is often heard by foreigners who have lived in Albania, but not by us Albanians. "Albania's disease" so it is a phenomenon that we must recognize ourselves. "Albania's disease", a condition that has no way of being defined unless we explain the stories of sufferers in the first place. Byron, Nopcsa, Hahn, Durham, Baldacci... and so on, all of them have felt the need from time to time to live in the stables of Albanian shepherds or to walk through the narrow alleys of Shkodra, Gjirokastra and other cities.

In his bicentennial journey to "Morbus Albanensis", some cases are known, some may have been crazy, some have been driven by some failed love story to hide in the mountain groves. "Morbus Albanensis" it is the only one in a long line of diseases that we should not try to fight, rather we should try to have it.

Queen of the Highlanders

England is the typical traveller's country. "Empire, where the sun never sets", it is perhaps the place where more travel books have been written than any other country. It was here, on a night with the traditional English fog, that Edith Durham was born, a name that would later mean many things, especially for us Albanians. It may sound like a miracle, but it really was. An illness, a depression caused by the death of her father, forced Durham to undertake her first travels. "Climate and environment must be changed", the doctor who said these words did not even think that he was leading Edith to another disease: Morbus Albanensis. At a difficult age, 37 years old, without any great prospects and still terribly saddened by the death of his father, Durham sets out to see new lands. Her fate wanted her to see the land of the Albanians. Shkodra was her first contact with the "land of the Albanians". In 1896, Shkodra was one of the most important cities in the entire Orient. "Stuck" in a position from which only money could be derived, the ancient city began to have a period of economic prosperity, which quite impressed the Englishwoman coming from another world.

The "virus" had already entered. A few years later, in 1904, Durham began to travel to other areas of Albania. The ability to wonder remains ever strong in the Englishwoman, and the descriptions she left behind are filled with stories that are permeated with subtle English irony: "Although they were very kind and came and even covered my feet when they remembered that I had fallen asleep, the brother snored like thunder, while the Muslim got up and made coffee whenever he felt like it." Durham's long journey through the exhausted Albanian lands would continue until the fiery years of the Balkan Wars, but the connection had already been made. In 1928, Ahmet Zogu would give him the highest Albanian order of that time: the Order of Skenderbeu. Durham closed her eyes on her soil, always remembering Albania. "Morbus Albanensis" it had turned out to be an incurable disease.

Baldacci, the man of flowers

Antonio Baldacci was a botanist. By profession, he had to climb mountains and gorges to discover new types of plants, which his predecessors had not seen with their eyes. Gërxhe, swords, rocks and others like these, Albania has always had in abundance. Antonio from Genoa has left behind many works on Albania. This is another patient from the "infection" we mentioned above. He undertook his first trip through the Albanian territories in 1888. From this year until much later, he could not avoid the magic of staying in the hearths of the highlanders, listening to legends and why not... eating a simple dish , with beans cooked in the traditional way.

His most famous book "Albanian itinerary" an example of one of the most interesting documents still remains. Baldacci died late in the time of fascism. His work was propagandized by fascists as an example of an old friendship that "connects our two shores". It was indeed so, but the fascists in this case had no way of knowing the "Morbus Albanensis" factor. Studies on the old disease took a few more years to prove.

Little Doctors Anonymous

History is usually made by people who leave something behind. Hahn, Durham and others have left behind thousands of pages of publications. This whole story has another side, that of the foreigners who have not appeared and so much in the pages that constitute publicity. Usually doctors, they arrived in Albania for various reasons and stayed here for a long time until they disappeared and were buried simply as Albanians. The first of the Marubi is one of them, but a lot has already been written about him. Some of the "sick" who have remained in the shadows...

His name was Emilio Tedeschini. It is not known why in the distant year 1766 he settled in Shkodër. He came from Naples and quickly managed to create a wide circle of personal clients, from wealthy families. Tedeschini then moved to Durrës. He died in 1868 and left behind a son, who is still considered the oldest pharmacist in Shkodra. The records of the second Tedeschini are lost in the mists of the centuries, but the list of our sick continues to grow...

Many foreigners have entered and exited these lands. One of them came from Austria, his name was Franz Piohler. If he had time, he would undoubtedly have become one of the well-known doctors of Shkodra and Bushatlli, but he could not. He was ambushed by an assassination attempt.

Another, Telesforo De Clericis, had served for many years as Bonaparte's army physician. No one knows how he ended up in Shkodër. Archival documents mention it twice. Once when his wife dies and the other time when he marries for the second time. It is only known that he was from Milan and that he served as the doctor of Bushatlli for a long time. Pierre Thomas was another doctor who lived in Shkodër at the beginning of the last century. In the church registers are registered a bunch of children that the Frenchman left behind. The disease had started to take strong roots... His name was Simini, but the people of Shkodër liked to call him Doctor Jasemini. He came to Shkodër directly from his city, from Lecja. He performed many miracles there in the middle of the last century and left behind a river of legends. His further fate is unknown. It is only known that he married a local Catholic girl.

The storm caused by the Garibaldian revolution in Italy sent a large crowd to Albania "to be sick". Filippo Marmocchi had been a staunch Garibaldian. When the uprising against the Bourbons of Naples failed, he had no choice but to look – like many others – to the opposite shore. In Shkodër, he left behind a good name and a story that many others would continue. Apparently, not only Albanians were a people of refugees.

Rudolf Schmidt must not have been that sick from the virus we are talking about, however, the elderly remembered him until recently under the name "Doctor Shmitri". A nurse who worked with him in the city's Austro-Hungarian hospital seems to have been the cause of this nickname. From 1889 to the first years of our century, Schmidt directed the first civil hospital of the city, becoming one of the main figures of Shkodran. He died in Trieste without leaving behind either children or property.

Kaser and others in Dukagjin

The virus that bears the Albanian name has insisted on not disappearing despite the many vicissitudes that the old continent went through. In our so-called modern times, the virus has appeared under a different outfit: with jeans or with expensive cameras, and with other contacts.

One of the modern sufferers is Karl Kaser, a professor at the University of Graz in Austria. He took his first trip through Albania in 1988, at a time when the itineraries of a foreigner were still under surveillance. Then he didn't leave Albania for years and years until he did one of the biggest "adventures" of his life: the one-month trip through Dukagjin.

Swollen by mosquito bites, tired from long journeys on foot, but also disappointed by what they saw, the group of 20 students arrived one summer night in Tirana, after a month's cohabitation with the young highlanders of Albania. They were satisfied from the professional side, because they had done what many had failed to do themselves, but they also felt surprised. In exchange for sleeping or food, they had been asked for money among the Highlanders. And this did not coincide with what they had read from the old "sick people". Even the virus has mutated.

Franzi among the stones of the monument

Many people remember the brave photographer who continued to do his work amidst stones and tear gas in February 1991. Franz Gustincich is one of the most exemplary witnesses of Albania in recent years. From the moment of the photo that showed the bronze monument of Hoxha that was falling down. Franzi himself says "I had the bad luck to get infected" - it was not shared with him and apparently it will not be shared with Albania and the Albanians.

Just like one of his Italian colleagues, who had gone so far as to found a newspaper in Tirana, Franzi, when he sent a letter from Italy to his friends, wrote: "Guys, I am writing to you from exile." A strong signal that Albania's disease has already reached another level. /GazetaSi/