AOK Leipzig

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The Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse (AOK) Leipzig was a health insurance company that existed from 1887–1951 and 1990–1996 and was based in Leipzig .

Foundation of the Leipzig local health insurance fund

Main entrance of Otto Droge's AOK building (behind the trees on the left you can see the so-called civil servants' residence)
View into the foyer of the AOK building

Immediately after the introduction of statutory health insurance for workers in 1884, industrial workers were compulsorily insured in the various trades. The City Council of Leipzig set up 18 different local health insurance funds and a community insurance with a total of 20,000 members. In order to get rid of this unmanageability, the Leipziger and the other German health insurance funds joined together to form the Central Association of Local Health Insurance Funds in the German Empire , which was founded in Leipzig on November 25, 1884. As a result, the Leipziger Kassen, organized in the “Centralverband”, merged on January 1, 1887 to form the Common Local Health Insurance Fund for Leipzig and the surrounding area (later the General Local Health Insurance Fund - AOK ). Its seat was at Weststrasse 32 (today Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse) later from 1890-1896 in the old Nikolaischule at the Nikolaikirchhof .

Willmar Schwabe , co-founder and chairman of the AOK Leipzig from 1892 to 1904, bought property in 1895 at Gellertstrasse 7-9 (today Littstrasse) and at Querstrasse 29 (Spamers Hof) for 750,000 marks, to which the administration of the AOK moved. This donation and two others that Dr. Willmar Schwabe'sche Heimstätten Foundation and the Zander Institute donated to the AOK by Rolf Ramdohr for the rehabilitation of AOK members made the Leipziger Ortskrankenkasse more financially independent. In 1920, the Treasury Committee was able to decide to tender for a new AOK building. During the time of Schwabe's chairmanship, the "Centralverband" was relocated from Leipzig to Dresden in 1903, and in 1911 it became part of the Hauptverband deutscher Ortskrankenkassen e. V. and in 1923 renamed Main Association of German Health Insurance Funds .

Importance of the AOK Leipzig for Germany

AOK Leipzig had the largest number of members in Germany until the First World War . In addition, it had an above-average range of services compared to other German health insurance companies. In 1928 the AOK Leipzig owned 13 polyclinics and had 613 doctors under contract. Leipzig was regarded as an exemplary example in the formulation of the Health Insurance Act and was a model for the establishment of local health insurance funds in other large cities such as Frankfurt am Main or Dresden. Regulations under Reich law had often become local law in Leipzig before they came into force and thus a model for the new regulations. In foreign reports and books on the German social security system, the German development was repeatedly presented using the example of Leipzig.

AOK's own Dr. Willmar Schwabe'sche Heimstätten Foundation , with which the possibility was created for AOK members to recover. In particular, the establishment of three convalescent homes brought AOK Leipzig recognition far beyond Germany. It has received numerous awards:

Dr. Willmar Schwabe'sche Heimstätten Foundation

Homestead Gut Gleesberg (around 1930)
Former homestead Gut Förstel (2008)

In the board meeting of the local health insurance fund on July 4, 1889, Willmar Schwabe declared that his two goods, acquired on June 29, 1889 - the Gleesberg estate near Schneeberg and the Förstel estate near Schwarzenberg - would initially be available to the AOK for 15 years to set up wards for convalescents deliver. The renovation and furnishing of the convalescent homes was largely financed by Leipzig companies, so that the “homes for convalescents” in Gleesberg on August 15, 1889 and in Förstel on October 15, 1889 could be opened.

In 1897 Schwabe acquired the Augustusbad spa near Radeberg , which, unlike the other two, had long served as a convalescent home. It is - founded in 1719 and named a spa by August the Strong - the oldest spa in Saxony and had two drinking springs , the tunnel and the salt spring , as well as five iron springs for baths. The Augustusbad had 16 buildings with 250 rooms and a Palais hotel with 80 rooms. The patients were cared for by two doctors and three trained deaconesses .

In 1904 Schwabe decided to merge the three convalescent homes in an independent family foundation and to transfer them to the local health insurance fund. With the award of the Saxon Ministry of the Interior on April 23, 1905, the Dr. Willmar Schwabe'sche Heimstätten-Stiftung has been declared legally competent. Schwabe named the purpose of the foundation in § 2 of the foundation statutes as follows: “The purpose of the foundation is to restore the poorly well to complete health after serious illness, to make them resistant to tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, thereby to extend their ability to work and those who support them Families are to receive this. "

Three more convalescent homes were added to the foundation's three convalescent homes: in 1909 the convalescent home and forest recreation center for slightly nervous male health insurance fund members in Naunhof , in 1921 the convalescent home in Kretscham-Rothensehma and, at the end of the 1920s, the home in Bad Schmiedeberg .

At the time of the global economic crisis , the number of people in convalescent homes fell so that the homes had to be closed. After the National Socialists came to power, the National Socialist People's Welfare converted the homes into NSV mothers' rest homes, which contradicted the will of the founder, but was approved by the Schwabe family.

After a few years after the founding of the GDR the FDGB was in charge of social security , the Heimstättenstiftung had to end its work in 1957, and the foundation's assets became public property . Gut Gleesberg was now known as "Feierabendheim Gleesberg" and was publicly owned by the city of Schneeberg. Gut Förstel was converted into an old people's home, and in 1959 it was given the name “After-work home for German-Soviet friendship”. The Augustusbad was occupied by the Red Army after the Second World War . The Kurhaus and administration building were used by the German People's Police as a police school from 1952 to 1989, and there was a retirement home on the area around the Luisenhof.

After the political change , members of the Schwabe family re-established the foundation on July 18, 1991 after transferring the corresponding properties and buildings back with the aim of using the assets again for their original purpose. On September 1, 1992, the Foundation received Gut Förstel back. After a renovation of the listed manor house, a facility for “assisted living” was put into operation there in 1996. Gut Gleesberg was taken over on January 1st, 1996 by Dr.-Willmar-Schwabeschen Heimstättenbetriebsgesellschaft gGmbH. In Liegau-Augustusbad the foundation wanted to renovate the Kurhaus and Schweizerhaus and build a new health clinic. However, this project was stopped in 1996 and postponed for an uncertain time. The main part of the Augustusbad has been unused and left to decay.

Construction of the administration building

The competition design by the Leipzig architect Otto Droge was accepted for the new administration building on the Willmar-Schwabe-Straße 2-4 / Frankfurter Straße (today Jahnallee ) property . The construction of the spacious new building took place in 1922–1925. In a departure from the design, Droge realized a reduced but still monumental complex (over 10,000 m²) on an irregular T-shaped floor plan. He found a solution that did not lead to the division of the axis Waldplatz - district access Leipzig-Lindenau. Administrative operations with around 8,000 visitors a day began on October 5, 1925. Before that, on August 15, 1925, the newly created street on the gable end of the administration building was given the name of the co-founder and long-time chairman Willmar Schwabe.

The building, which has largely been preserved in its original state and is now a listed building, is considered the main work of Art Deco in Saxony due to its interior design , but at the same time shows clear references to neoclassicism in its façades . The side front facing Jahnallee extends over a length of 117 meters, at the main entrance on the narrow side there is an atrium-like porch with a rectangular neoclassical forecourt. Structures made of porphyry tuff contrast with the ocher-colored plaster. On the upper floor there is a three-aisled counter hall (two rows of pillars each 68 meters long for originally 72 counters) under a heavy coffered ceiling made of reinforced concrete. The original entrance halls and a side staircase have also been preserved.

The end of the AOK in the GDR

After the Second World War, in 1947 , by order of the Soviet military administration, all health insurance funds were combined into a single social insurance system. That meant the end of the AOK Leipzig in 1951. From then on, the building served the German University of Physical Culture , first as a workers 'and farmers' faculty from 1952 to 1962 , then as a student residence from 1963 to 1989, and from 1964 to 1965 it was rebuilt.

AOK Leipzig is re-established

After the re-establishment of the AOK in the former GDR in 1990, the AOK Landesverband Rheinland took over the provisional management, then the AOK Leipzig was formed on January 1, 1991. At this point in time, all 540,000 Leipzig residents who had not switched to a substitute fund automatically became members of the AOK.

The first branch of the new AOK Leipzig opened on November 9, 1990 at 19 Grimmaische Strasse. Then from 1990 to 1996 the old AOK building was renovated, which was then returned to its original shape. Even before the renovation was completed, on January 2, 1991, operations could be resumed there.

On January 1, 1997, AOK Leipzig merged with AOK Chemnitz and AOK Dresden to form AOK Sachsen, based in Dresden , which later merged with AOK Thuringia and became AOK Plus on January 1, 2008 . The Leipzig Zentrum-West branch of the AOK Plus is located in the building built by Otto Droge.

literature

  • Siegfried Hübschmann: The Förstel in Langenberg. A historical foray. Published by the Dr. Willmar Schwabeschen Gemeinnützigen Heimstättenbetriebsgesellschaft mbH, Langenberg-Raschau, Heidler & Fahle Verlag, Scheibenberg 2002, ISBN 3-933625-27-0 .
  • Ingrid von Stumm: Health, Work and Gender in the Empire using the example of the sickness statistics of the Leipzig local health insurance fund 1887–1905. (Munich studies on modern and recent history, vol. 12), Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-631-49325-8 .
  • Thomas Adam: Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse Leipzig 1887 to 1997. Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-9806474-0-4 .
  • Georg Dehio: Handbook of the German art monuments. Saxony II. The administrative districts of Leipzig and Chemnitz. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1998, pp. 542 f., ISBN 3-422-03048-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On his work as chairman of the AOK Leipzig cf. Collection of sources on the history of German social policy from 1867 to 1914, III. Department: Expansion and differentiation of social policy since the beginning of the New Course (1890-1904), Volume 5, The statutory health insurance, edited by Wolfgang Ayaß , Florian Tennstedt and Heidi Winter, Darmstadt 2012, pp. 210, 245, 566, 585, 594 f., 619, 625, 627, 636, 667.
  2. ↑ Thomas Adam: Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse Leipzig 1887 to 1997. , p. 77.
  3. ^ Paul-Auguste Le Roy: L'Assistance publique en Allemagne. Législation, statistique de 1885. Berger-Levrault, Paris 1890.
  4. ↑ Thomas Adam: Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse Leipzig 1887 to 1997. , P. 39, 65.
  5. ↑ Thomas Adam: Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse Leipzig 1887 to 1997. , p. 40.
  6. ^ Ordinance on the social security of workers and employees of 23 August 1956. Journal I, No. 77, p. 681.

Web links

Commons : Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse Leipzig  - Collection of pictures

Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 28.75 "  N , 12 ° 21 ′ 25.32"  E