Moabit Hospital
The Moabit Hospital was a hospital in the Berlin district of Moabit . It was established at the end of the 19th century as an epidemic station for Berlin, but soon developed into a specialty hospital . In the 1920s it was a center for Jewish doctors and the most important hospital in Berlin after the Charité . After the hospital was taken over by National Socialist doctors and the buildings were severely damaged in the Second World War , the hospital lost its medical reputation. Although extensive construction and renovations followed, the Moabit hospital was closed in October 2001 in the wake of savings.
history
1872–1874: Barracks hospital as an epidemic station
Due to an emergency situation, the establishment of a barrack hospital as an epidemic station for smallpox epidemics was ordered in 1872 . The previously used area, the parade ground of the Berlin garrison on Tempelhofer Feld , wanted the War Ministry to use it for "field service exercises " and had the barracks there demolished. A three-person commission, including City Councilor Rudolf Virchow , selected arable land near Moabit as the new location. On an area of 75,900 square meters, 16 barracks for 30 beds each, an administration building, a kitchen and laundry room, a machine house, a porter's house, two sheds and a morgue were built within two months according to plans by the architect Adolf Gerstenberg .
The construction did not go completely without resistance: 1075 Moabites protested against the relocation of hundreds of people with cholera , smallpox or typhus to their area. According to the city council of Berlin, the costs for construction and furnishing amounted to 1,056,114 marks . The barracks were single-story and built without a cellar, as the area was initially only intended as a temporary measure. Poor quality drinking water was obtained from its own well until it was connected to the central water supply in 1885. As an experiment, the buildings were heated by steam from the start: pipes with a total length of 7.5 kilometers ran through the site and provided warm rooms and warm bathing water. As early as 1873, eight more barracks and a disinfection house were added to the facility. Since the sick were still lying in their beds on straw sacks, a year later a straw incineration plant was built for hygienic reasons.
The official opening took place on May 7th, 1872, but by this time the epidemic situation in Berlin had already greatly improved. However, the housing shortage among the poor has led to the spread of infectious diseases and illnesses among children. Since all suitable houses declared in May 1872 that they could no longer accept patients, the poor administration opened a children's ward in the Moabit barracks. 144 children had been cared for by October and the first adults were not admitted until the fall of a typhus epidemic. Typhus and cholera contributed to the 2,288 patients treated by October 1874. Then the Friedrichshain Municipal General Hospital opened and the Moabit temporary facility was deemed superfluous and closed.
1875–1932: A hospital with a reputation
The shutdown did not last long. "In order to secure trained staff [...] in the event of new epidemics," the local authorities decided in August 1875 to reopen the site as a proper hospital. The newly qualified Heinrich Curschmann was appointed as medical director . The hospital fulfilled its original purpose during the great typhus epidemic in Berlin, which lasted from January 1879 into the summer.
Further use also changed the character of the facility. Solid brick buildings based on plans by the city building councilor Hermann Blankenstein gradually replaced the original, rather provisional buildings made of half-timbered and bricks in a renovation that lasted until 1896 . New facilities such as an insulating barracks, a laboratory and, in 1889, a new morgue were built for new needs. In addition, there was also a stable for laboratory animals and five new barracks on the north side of the site, so that the total number of barracks increased to 29 - barracks numbers 30 to 34 were built around 1895. From the kitchen with the utility rooms, rails were built along the Free-standing barracks were placed so that the food “could be pushed in a cart to the door”.
The hospital had 730 beds, four assistant doctors and 43 attendants in 1886. It mainly treated sick people who were admitted by the poor administration, the health insurance companies or by employers . They had to commit to paying the spa costs or pay an advance of 52.50 marks. Emergencies were recorded free of charge. "Eye, syphilis - and mentally ill, as well as pregnant women" were strictly excluded, because pregnancy was not understood as an illness at the time and birth in one's own home was considered normal. In contrast, the doctors treated many diseases of the respiratory organs, because Moabit was an industrial district with high air pollution. At that time the residents were mostly simple workers and so around 1884 the poor fund bore the costs for over 82 percent of the sick. The expenses for the drugs were very low: the hospital pharmacy listed amounts of 8.4 pfennigs per patient in 1890. However, only hospitalized patients were cared for. Outpatient clinic patients received prescriptions that had to be redeemed in public pharmacies. Around 1900, the hospital pharmacy listed “Cognac, wine, eggs, meat extract” as the second largest cost item.
In the 1880s, Robert Koch experimented with disinfection and sterilization using the hospital's two heat disinfection machines. Around 1890 he was given five barracks with 150 beds, in which Paul Ehrlich carried out experiments with tuberculin for the treatment of tuberculosis on Koch's behalf . With the opening of a surgical department in April of the same year, both external and internal diseases could be treated. At that time, the hospital did not yet have operating theaters. Only after three years of construction was a massive operating theater put into operation on July 25, 1896 - including separate waiting rooms for women and men.
The first municipal nursing school in Berlin was founded in 1904 in order to be able to replace the unskilled attendants at the hospital . Already in 1890 the establishment of a “nurses asylum” was suggested and the question of trained staff was raised. According to City Councilor Weigert, the male guards lacked "the humanity that adheres to the sister and makes her intercourse with the sick a profitable one." Therefore, in 1892, the construction of the civil servants' house with classrooms and training rooms began to train future care workers. After the school was founded, the nurses replaced all male guards until 1914. Matron Edith Koehler reported: "Everywhere the sick received the sisters with great joy." It was also Koehler who in 1904 founded the first urban sisterhood in Berlin. Little by little, more and more women found their way into the hospital. The magistrate hired the first female assistant doctor on a trial basis in 1906.
Weyl spoke out against private wards in city hospitals at the city council meeting in 1908: “We don't know of pneumonia or typhus first or second class!” Nevertheless, in 1911 the first ward for privately paying patients with 60 beds was set up.
The other buildings on the site of the hospital were built from 1907 onwards, mainly according to plans by Ludwig Hoffmann .
The quality of the medical services in the Moabit Hospital was so good that in 1920 it was the only city hospital in Berlin to be promoted to a university clinic . The III. The surgical and IV internal university clinics were set up, and in 1937 a separate lecture hall was built. The city hospital rose to become the most important hospital in Berlin after the Charité . His doctors also had a worldwide reputation: In 1922 Georg Klemperer and Moritz Borchardt were called to Moscow to remove a bullet from Lenin's neck that had been fired during an assassination attempt. The President of the Reichstag, Paul Löbe , had Borchardt operate his appendix in 1927 .
The medical officer set up pregnancy and sexual counseling after the hospital was placed under the Tiergarten Health Department in 1924. Welfare centers for alcoholics and "poison addicts" were also opened. Addiction gradually came to be seen as a disease to be cured, not punished. The hospital became the site of the municipal health system , which also housed rehabilitation centers for tuberculosis sufferers and cripples , the district midwife center and a school dental clinic.
1932–1945: "Saber rattles" by the National Socialists
In the early 1930s, the victims of the political street and hall battles in the Moabit district were admitted to the hospital, including Herbert Norkus in 1932 , who succumbed to his injuries and whose story was processed in the propaganda film Hitlerjunge Quex .
The newspaper Volkischer Beobachter headline on March 21, 1933 " Jewish leave doctors Stadtmedizinalrat Pg. Dr. Klein cleans up the Moabit hospital. ”Since around 70 percent of the doctors were Jewish and ten percent of the nursing staff were unionized, the hospital was considered“ red and Jewish ”. The article stated that the doctors were "on leave with immediate effect" and that employees who are "either Jews or foreigners or members of the Marxist parties" have "been banned from entering the hospital". The letters followed four days later, in which the Jewish doctors were fired "as a precaution by September 30, 1933". But the date was only a glimpse. On April 1, SA Storm 33 deported some doctors to a “wild” concentration camp on General-Pape-Strasse (see SA prison Papestrasse ) according to prepared lists from the hospital administration . The dismissal of older doctors and other employees took place in batches. The hospital administration reported the successful "cleansing" to the district office on October 7th: 89 employees had already been dismissed, eight more were to follow.
Of the 47 doctors, 23 had already been discharged in April 1933, by the beginning of 1934 this number had increased to 30. Most of them were chief physicians, senior physicians or assistant physicians with many years of experience. The newly appointed doctors close to the NSDAP could not keep up with the quality of their predecessors. A military and arrogant tone found its way into the hospital: "What do you think we did in the trenches!" Was the motto and the death rate in the hospital rose dramatically. From SS -Doctor Kurt Strauss, it was said that he was so incompetent that many of his patients died of postoperative complications - a patient he had sewn the cecum to the abdominal wall, in 1938 even "three liability litigation based on division of the running radial nerve " against Strauss. The hospital's good reputation quickly evaporated, and the politically motivated renaming to the Robert Koch Municipal Hospital in 1935 did not help.
As ordered by the hereditary health courts , forced sterilizations were also carried out in the Moabit hospital . Alcoholics, among others, were sterilized as “suitable patients” - lists in which they had been recorded in the welfare office of the hospital before 1933 made work easier for the National Socialists. Women with behavioral problems, including allegedly feeble-minded people , schizophrenics and manic-depressive lunatics, were rendered sterile after 1936 using x-ray castration. Not all employees took the hustle and bustle of the National Socialists idly: The European Union resistance group was formed around Georg Groscurth and Robert Havemann , but its members were arrested by the Gestapo in 1943.
When the war broke out in 1939, a reserve hospital was set up, some of the male employees were drafted into the Wehrmacht and nurses were assigned to care for the wounded. The first bomb damage was caused by air raids in November 1940 on the surgical pavilion, only then was priority given to the construction of shelters. At this time an operating bunker was also built , which was used for radiation therapy after the war . Other departments have been relocated to surrounding buildings, such as empty schools. An alternative hospital for the patients was in Buch , so that despite the total of twelve bomb damage in the course of the war, only six were killed. The situation was worse for the buildings themselves: the majority of them had already been destroyed in 1943 as a result of the area bombing .
1945–1985: reconstruction
Of the 1,850 beds that were available before the Second World War, only 340 were still usable after the end of the war. In addition, there was a shortage of doctors, which arose from denazification and had to be compensated for by returnees and refugees. In addition, the Soviet military ordered the establishment of a department for venereal diseases because many raped women were brought in after zero hour . Much was missing: the laundry manager reported in 1946 that the smock and bed linen and even the thread for mending were not available - it was only after 1950 that patients no longer had to bring their own bed linen. For the inpatient care of the sick, auxiliary hospitals in the Dominican monastery as well as in Oldenburger and Waldenserstrasse were used; surgical beds were in the former flak tower at the zoo . Other parts of the hospital were housed in a former private clinic and schools.
In the course of the reconstruction, the hospital got its old name back in 1947 Städtisches Krankenhaus Moabit . The replacement rooms soon had to be vacated; the schools, for example, were cleared in the same year. The flak tower was blown up and removed, and all auxiliary hospitals were closed by 1950. Space was becoming increasingly scarce and the reconstruction of the buildings on the main site in Turmstrasse was very slow. The replacement for the destroyed building continued until the 1970s. This phase was completed in 1977 with the demolition of the administration building and the construction of the new health department.
1985–2001: Resistance to closure
For a total of 16 years, the hospital fought against the threat of closure, which the health insurances were planning to reduce costs. The number of beds has been almost halved, the legal form has been changed several times, an outpatient operation center has been set up and hospital stays have been shortened ever more. Clinic employees demonstrated, took part in the Love Parade with the Love Ambulance in 1999 and even went on hunger strike . In the end without success.
As early as 1985 the Berlin Senate announced its first plans to close. The Lazarus and Paul-Gerhardt-Stift hospitals, which were also affected , therefore moved from Wedding to Moabit and founded the Moabit GbR hospital on December 18, 1986 with the city hospital. This municipal-diaconal association was converted into a non-profit organization, the Krankenhaus Moabit gGmbH, in 1997. The statistics for this calendar year spoke of 695 beds, 1,256 employees and 21,886 patients treated. But in 1998 the hospital was again considered a candidate for closure in the external Beske report , which was confirmed by the hospital plan of the Senate in 1999. On October 31, 2001, the Moabit Hospital was finally closed and 752 employees fired.
Since 2001: current use
The management of the site was transferred to Berliner Immobilienmanagement GmbH on January 1, 2004, which set up the Moabit health and social center there. Some of the buildings are rented as medical practices, branch offices of other hospitals or to various organizations such as the Diakonie . Furthermore, there is a rehabilitation clinic ( median clinic ) and an old people's home (nursing home senior center Abendstern) in House M on the premises.
The treatment center for torture victims is a nationally recognized facility at the site .
In addition, the State Institute for Forensic and Social Medicine (GerMed) and forensic medicine of the Charité are located in the hospital's former pathological institute.
The Berlin State Office for Health and Social Affairs has also had its headquarters here for several years. All in all, more jobs were created at the site in the healthcare sector after the closure as a hospital than were lost due to the closure in 2001.
Special facilities
Bacteriological-Serological Institute
Although it was founded in 1891, the bacteriological institute did not have a full-time doctor until 1906. Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner also held this position from 1920 until her forced retirement in 1934.
X-ray institute
The hospital's first request for X-ray examination apparatus was sent to the Berlin magistrate in 1896 . The reaction there was hesitant because the acquisition costs were very high. It was agreed to rent a device, so that in 1897 only a small X-ray cabinet was built. Privy Councilor Georg Klemperer therefore approached the matter differently in 1922: he proposed to Siemens & Halske that a joint X-ray institute should be set up. Technology was constantly evolving at the time, but the company lacked practical experience with patients. In 1923, for example, a contract was drawn up that ran until the end of 1932. Siemens undertook to maintain the X-ray systems and the city financed the renovation of the premises and the energy supply. After the renovation and expansion of three barracks, the Werner Siemens Institute for X-ray Research was opened in March 1924 . The first director of the institute was allowed to run a private practice in the rooms outside of the official working hours and had to pay fees to the city for this.
The contract between the company and the magistrate was renewed for ten years in 1934, but in 1939 a new contract for a Central Roentgen Institute was presented and accepted. The planning envisaged ten examination rooms on 2000 square meters for deep therapy, short-distance and close-range radiation, but also arteriography . The Charlottenburger Zeitung reported that the first X-ray clinic in Germany was to be built and completed by the international X-ray congress in 1940. However, the war delayed the construction work. Finally, after bomb damage in November 1943, all equipment was moved to the X-ray cellar and the work of the institute was discontinued due to the war. Planning for the relocation of the institute to Buch was still under discussion in June 1944.
In 1953, the Tiergarten district office and Siemens-Reiniger-Werke signed a contract that was similar in content to the one from 1923. The cobalt cannon , a radioactive radiation source used to treat cancer, was installed in 1971. Due to its merits in tumor treatment, the hospital was declared a recognized tumor center in 1985.
Location and architecture
The establishment of the epidemic station in northwest Berlin was primarily due to financial reasons. Moabit was already sufficiently developed to cope with the logistics, but still so sparsely populated that large construction areas could be obtained for a low price. In an impact assessment for the environment and residents, the prevailing wind direction and the soil conditions were examined, among other things , in order to assess the impact of the hospital on the surroundings.
The first installation in the barracks system in 1872 corresponded to the understanding of hygiene at that time. According to the type of illness, the patients were separated and placed in smaller groups. In the event of an outbreak, this prevented it from spreading to other patients. The barracks consisted of simple timber framework, more massive structures made of masonry with brick facings, articulated parts were made of terracotta . These construction methods and the arrangement of the barracks in a regular horseshoe shape can be architecturally assigned to simple eclecticism . None of the original barracks have survived, as they were completely replaced by solid buildings from 1920.
Towards the end of the Second World War, the massive buildings from the early days were largely destroyed. The few remaining buildings are now under monument protection , such as the former staff residence and the residential home for nurses at the main entrance on Turmstrasse.
useful information
The hospital did not only care for people: In March 1957, the baby gorilla Knorke was admitted to the quarantine station of the children's department. It suffered from salmonella poisoning and was looked after by its own sister. The Berliners flocked to the station window in large numbers to take a look at this unusual guest.
Prominent doctors of the facility
- Moritz Borchardt (employed 1919–1933) surgeon
- Werner Forßmann (employed 1938–1939) - put the first cardiac catheter in a self-experiment
- Kurt Goldstein (employed 1930–1933) neurologist and pioneer in psychosomatics
- Georg Groscurth (employed 1934–1943) - initiator of the European Union resistance group
- Ernst Haase (employed 1923–1932) addiction therapist
- Siegbert Joseph (employed 1919–1933) gynecologist
- Georg Klemperer (employed 1906–1933) internist and pioneer of psychosomatic medicine
- Max Marcus (employed 1920–1932) surgeon
- Lydia Rabinowitsch-Kempner (employed 1920–1934) - detected tuberculosis pathogens in milk
- Fritz Schiff (employed 1919–1920) - well-known bacteriologist, merits for blood group testing
literature
- Manfred Stürzbecher : 125 years of Moabit Hospital. 1872-1997 . Weidler, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89693-105-9 .
- Bernd Hildbrandt (Ed.): Our Moabit Hospital is 125 years old. Historical kaleidoscope from the foundation to the present day . Weidler, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-89693-110-5 .
- Eva Brinkschulte, Thomas Knuth (Ed.): The medical Berlin - A city guide through 300 years of history . Be.bra Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-8148-0178-0 .
- Christian Pross , Rolf Winau (Ed.): Do not abuse. Moabit Hospital. 1920–1933 A center for Jewish doctors in Berlin. 1933–1945 Persecution, resistance, destruction . Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-88725-109-1 , p. 109 ff.
- Manfred Stürzbecher: Moabit Municipal Hospital. Festschrift for the 100th anniversary. District Office Tiergarten of Berlin, Berlin 1972.
- Thomas Loy: Clinically dead . In: Der Tagesspiegel , January 27, 2002 (commentary on the closure of the hospital).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Architects Association of Berlin and Association of Berlin Architects (ed.): Berlin and his buildings , Volume II, Verlag Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1896, p. 438
- ^ Meyers Konversationslexikon , Volume 10, 1888, p. 149
- ^ Construction documents in the archive of the Architekturmuseum der Technische Universität Berlin
- ↑ Hildbrandt, p. 16.
- ↑ Pross, pp. 206-208
- ↑ With the Techno-Ambulance to the Love Parade . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 14, 1999.
- ↑ Jürgen Bosenius, Fina Geschonneck: Eleven days hunger strike in Moabit hospital . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 9, 1999.
- ↑ Senate Department for Labor, Social Affairs and Women to the Main Committee of the Berlin House of Representatives from January 11, 2002, case 0088 (PDF), accessed on September 9, 2006.
- ↑ Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin (ed.): Berlin and its buildings, Part VII, Volume A Hospitals , Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-937251-58-8 , p. 220
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '38.4 " N , 13 ° 20' 52.5" E