Faschistische Eugenik und Kinder mit Behinderung zwischen Integration und Ablehnung in Italien

This essay examines the development of Italian eugenics from the late nineteenth century to the Fascist period, focusing on its implications for the treatment of disability. It argues that Italian eugenics emerged within a broader project of national regeneration that linked hygiene, schooling, and moral education to the strengthening of the Italian population after unification. Unlike German and Anglo-American models, Italian eugenics was shaped by a relatively “moderate” approach that generally rejected biological determinism, sterilization, and euthanasia, while emphasizing prevention, social reform, and educational intervention. The essay reconstructs the contribution of late nineteenth-century hygienism and Italian anthropology, especially the influence of Cesare Lombroso and Giuseppe Sergi, and shows how these traditions were reworked under Fascism. Fascist policies combined public health measures, maternal and child welfare, and demographic concerns with an effort to forge the “new Italian” as physically robust, morally disciplined, and socially productive. Within this framework, disabled people occupied an ambiguous position. War invalids and many sensory or physically disabled individuals could be celebrated as worthy Italian citizens, while intellectually disabled and psychiatrically classified children were more often subjected to segregation, institutionalization, and exclusionary diagnostic practices. The essay concludes that Fascist eugenics was characterized by a persistent tension between assistance and repression, inclusion and marginalization. The history of disability thus reveals the internal contradictions of Italian eugenics and its lasting impact on educational and psychiatric practices beyond the Fascist era.