OBITUARY Heidelberg University mourns the loss of Prof. Dr Hans Jochen Diesfeld
It is with great sadness that Heidelberg University bids farewell to Professor Hans Jochen Diesfeld, who passed away on 19 March 2025, at the age of 92. As a pioneer in tropical medicine, he had a lasting impact on the development and establishment of this field at Ruperto Carola University – in particular through his visionary expansion into “global medicine.”
For more than two decades, Prof. Diesfeld served as Medical Director of the Department of Tropical Hygiene and Public Health. During this time, he provided groundbreaking impetus in research, teaching, and international cooperation. “In Heidelberg, within the interdisciplinary concept of the South Asia Institute, we had developed an awareness that health and disease have a broad social, cultural, and political basis – an understanding that was invaluable for development workers as well as for students from countries in the Global South,” he once said, looking back on the beginnings of “global medicine.”
Hans Jochen Diesfeld understood tropical medicine not only as a medical discipline, but also as part of a global responsibility. His concern was for a form of medicine that was not limited to postcolonial health concepts, but took social, political, and cultural contexts seriously – especially in countries of the Global South. A central concern of his work was to highlight health inequalities worldwide and to bring humanitarian perspectives into medicine.
“Then as now, we lose sight of the fact that humans are not just biochemical machines, but have psychosocial functions in the broadest sense,” says Prof. Diesfeld. He therefore advocated a holistic theory of human medicine in which humans are understood as part of a complex interaction with their environment. The example of so-called developing countries in particular showed him how necessary it is to critically question the scientific model of medical thinking and to further develop it conceptually.
With his tireless dedication, Hans Jochen Diesfeld leaves behind not only a scientific legacy, but also a profound humanitarian legacy.
Literature reference
Hans Jochen Diesfeld: Gesundheitsproblematik der Dritten Welt, WB-Forum 48, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1989
