Old General Hospital Vienna

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Old General Hospital, 1784
The AKH around 1830
Overview of the building blocks of the old and the new AKH
Baroque grand staircase
The tower of fools in 2006
Narrenturm, renovated condition (2019)

The Altes Allgemeine Krankenhaus , or Altes AKH for short , today the University of Vienna campus , is a building complex in Spitalgasse in Alsergrund (9th district of Vienna), which was the former location of the Vienna General Hospital and is now a campus of the University of Vienna .

history

Invalid Hospital

The origins of the Vienna General Hospital go back to Johann Franckh, who donated his land on Alserstrasse ( Schaffernack corridor ) for the construction of a soldiers' hospital in 1686 after the end of the Second Turkish Siege of Vienna . However, as the money to erect the building was initially lacking, the war invalids and their families were quartered in the existing Kontumazhof (disease hospital).

It was not until 1693 that Emperor Leopold I ordered the construction of the house for the great poor and invalids . The first courtyard was completed in 1697 and accommodated 1,042 people. In order to take Franckh's wishes into account, war invalids moved into their quarters in the wing on Alser Strasse , but the rest of the residents were civilian poor . In 1724, 1740 people lived here.

The complex could be expanded by the will of Ferdinand Freiherr von Thavonat, who donated his property after his death in 1726 to disabled soldiers. As a result, the already started 2nd courtyard (marriage or widow's courtyard, now called Thavonathof) could be completed. The side courtyards formed by intermediate tracts, the hospital courtyard (4th), service courtyard (5th) and craftsmen's courtyard (7th) were also built. 1733 under Emperor Charles VI. was structurally expanded according to plans by Matthias Gerl and Franz Anton Pilgram . Erection of a three-lane baroque grand staircase with long steps made of hard, light-colored Kaiserstein from Kaisersteinbruch . Franz Trumler and Simon Sasslaber worked as master stonemasons from 1735 to 1738 .

From 1752 to 1774 the student courtyard (3rd) and the caretaker's courtyard (6th) were expanded. The residents had to wear their own uniform and were given their own copper coins that could be redeemed at the bakers , butchers, etc. in the complex .

general Hospital

On January 28, 1783, Emperor Joseph II visited the poor house. He found that the huge facility was not so much used for emergency relief, but rather housed people who had got there through protection or sloppiness. On the spur of the moment , he picked up the facility and had his personal physician Joseph Quarin , who later became director, reschedule it as a general hospital. The model was the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris .

The opening took place on August 16, 1784. The dedication in the archway to Alserstrasse reads “Saluti et solatio aegrorum” (“For the salvation and comfort of the sick”). For the first time, the house was only responsible for patient care; the other tasks of the hospitals were separated. A madhouse and a birthing center were connected to the hospital, and from 1806 the foundling house (Alser Straße 23) was added.

The fool's tower was the first special building to accommodate the mentally ill and offered space for 200 to 250 patients. Because of its peculiar shape, the Viennese also refer to it as “(Emperor Joseph's) Guglhupf”. Today it is the seat of the Federal Pathological-Anatomical Museum Vienna and weekly cultural events take place every summer.

After the neighboring cemetery was closed, the 8th and 9th courtyards were finally added in 1834 under Emperor Franz I. The Pathological-Anatomical Institute, which opened in 1862 under Carl von Rokitansky and served this purpose until 1991, is located in courtyard 10 on Spitalgasse . On the gable is the inscription “Indagandis sedibus et causis morborum” (“The exploration of the seat and the causes of the diseases”). The Center for Brain Research has been housed here since 2000.

There were reorganizations in 1865 when the birthing and insane asylum came under the administration of the Crown Land of Lower Austria (see Brünnlfeld ), and in 1922 when the federal state of Vienna was created. In the 1930s, the Forensic Medicine Institute was built almost at right angles to the Pathological-Anatomical Institute in Sensengasse, in front of the Narrenturm, and was in operation until 2007. In the 1950s, barracks were built in the courtyards for reasons of space and as a modernization, which were removed again during the campus renovation, as were the numerous additions to the original building.

The former garrison hospital I with its remarkable former lecture hall is located in the same block . Between 1933 and 1967 it housed the nursing school and today it houses, among other things, the university dental clinic. Immediately behind this is the Collegium Medico-Chirurgicum Josephinum on Währinger Strasse .

Especially in the 19th century, as the center of the Vienna Medical School , the General Hospital was a place of excellent research. Here Ignaz Semmelweis made observations on the hygiene at the two separate maternity clinics in the 8th and 9th courtyards. Karl Landsteiner discovered blood groups at the AKH (Nobel Prize 1930). Julius Wagner-Jauregg developed malaria therapy for progressive paralysis (an incurable late stage of syphilis; Nobel Prize 1927). The neurobiologist Róbert Bárány (Nobel Prize 1914) and the surgeon Theodor Billroth also worked here and in the new clinics.

On March 3, 1984, Ernst Wolner and Axel Laczkovics performed the first heart transplant in Vienna at the AKH. According to Wolner, one of the main shortcomings of the AKH at the time was the lack of a sterile room in the intensive care unit, the problem no longer exists since the AKH was rebuilt .

campus

Courtyard 1 on the campus of the University of Vienna

After the new AKH in Michelbeuern was already being planned, Mayor Franz Jonas announced at the 600th anniversary of the university that they were considering donating the nearby area to the university, which was made legally possible by the University Organization Act of 1975 . On December 7th, 1988, the notarial act was signed by Mayor Helmut Zilk and Rector Wilhelm Holczabek . As early as 1986 an “Action Committee Old General Hospital” was founded, which was supposed to initiate the adaptation work. Construction began in 1993.

use

Since the relocation of the medical institutes, the campus of the University of Vienna with numerous humanities institutes as well as several restaurants and smaller companies in the first courtyard have been located on the site of the old AKH .

The site was converted after a usability analysis from 1988 and a key program from 1992. The authors of the implementation are the architects Hugo Potyka, Friedrich Kurrent , Johannes Zeininger, Sepp Frank and Ernst M. Kopper, who joined the ARGE Architects Altes AKH had merged. The complex was handed over to users in 1998.

In addition to university institutes and shops, the old AKH also has restaurants with extensive open-air operations.

Courtyards and gates

Courtyard 1

Completed in 1697, famous for the Christmas market

Courtyard 2 (Thavonathof)

former marriage or widow's farm

Courtyard 6 (caretaker's yard)

In 1903 the architect Max Fleischer built a “ prayer pavilion” in courtyard 6 , financed by donations from the community. During the Reichspogromnacht in 1938 it was badly devastated, after the war it was used as a transformer station and reopened in 2005 as the Denk-Mal Marpe Lanefesh / Healing for the Soul after a redesign .

Gates

Furthermore, with the adaptation by the university, passages or gates were named after outstanding personalities of the university and also have plexiglass panels with biographical details of the namesake. The names were named after: Karl Beth , Sibylle Bolla-Kotek , Martha Steffy Browne , Conrad Celtis , Guido Holzknecht , Marie Jahoda , Carl Menger sen. and Karl Menger jun. , Georg von Peuerbach , Enea Silvio Piccolomini , Franz Romeo Seligmann , Paul de Sorbait , Eduard Suess , Alfred Verdross and Renate Wagner-Rieger .

Transport links

The old AKH can be reached by trams 5, 33, 43 and 44 ( Spitalgasse station at Hof 1). The eastern parts of the complex are within walking distance of trams 37, 38, 40, 41 and 42 as well as the Schottentor U2 station . In March 2014, the city administration fixed that the planned U5 will have a station ( Altes AKH ) on the university campus.

literature

  • Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. Volume 3: Ha-La. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-218-00545-0 , p. 591ff.
  • Alfred Ebenbauer , Wolfgang Greisenegger , Kurt Mühlberger (Eds.): University Campus Vienna . 2 volumes. Volume 1: History and Spirit, Volume 2: Architecture as Transformation. Holzhausen, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-900518-99-8 .
  • Richard Kurdiovsky: The public effectiveness of the new Vienna 'main hospital ' in architecture and print media . In: INSITU 2020/1, pp. 103–118.

Web links

Commons : General Hospital Vienna  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Raimund Margreiter , Transplantation in Austria - a historical review. In: "Austrian Transplant Journal", issue 1/2017 ( online )
  2. Article First heart transplant in Austria: A second heart beats next to your own in your chest , Arbeiter-Zeitung of October 13, 1983, p. 5 ( online ), accessed on January 27, 2018.

Coordinates: 48 ° 13 ′ 0 ″  N , 16 ° 21 ′ 9 ″  E