Billrothhaus
The Billrothhaus is the seat of the Society of Doctors in Vienna . It is named after the German doctor and former President of the Society Theodor Billroth .
history
The impetus for the construction of a house by the Society of Doctors was primarily the lack of space that the growing holdings of the association's specialist library brought with it. After the library in Vienna had moved several times, President Heinrich Bamberger had an action committee selected in 1885 to deal with the construction of its own pub. Finally, a piece of land owned by the Vienna City Expansion Fund was found in Vienna's 9th district that was to be bought. Theodor Billroth, the president of the association from 1888, called on the members of the society to acquire shares in the society house to be built, whereby the 662 m² property could finally be bought with the help of a loan for 57,000 guilders .
The action committee has drawn up guidelines for the construction of the social building. therefore had to be planned:
- a boardroom with at least 300 seats
- a gallery with at least 100 seats
- a room for the demonstration of anatomical and microscopic specimens
- a library and a reading room
- a conversation room and an archive room
- a meeting room with 80–100 seats and a meeting room for the board of directors
- an apartment for the caretaker
- Cloakrooms and toilets on each floor
The architect Ludwig Richter was finally entrusted with the task and two years later, on October 27, 1893, Theodor Billroth opened the house.
"So we are in our own home."
The building is two-story. The library and the large lecture hall are located in the street wing on the ground floor, and behind the staircase is the small lecture hall, which has now been converted into a magazine room. In 1906 the first structural adaptation was made: the inner courtyard was lowered and the basement was dried to enable the construction of a book magazine. In 1909, the building was finally expanded by building up part of the inner courtyard, which enabled the construction of a large and a small archive room and a cloakroom.
On May 9, 1919, the newly elected president of the association, Anton Eiselsberg, applied for the club house to be named "Billrothhaus". This request was granted.
During the Second World War , the Society of Doctors was dissolved and replaced by the Vienna Medical Society, which was controlled by the Nazi regime. The library was housed in a barn in Peigarten near Waidhofen an der Thaya to protect it from bomb attacks . The Billrothhaus was damaged by fighting during this time, but the necessary repair work was not started until the Society of Doctors was re-established after the war. When the library was brought back, the basement of the Billrothhaus had to be converted into a book store. In 1956 the library was expanded again.
The building has been a listed building since 2008.
architecture
The Billrothhaus is a two-story, five-axis, palais - like neo-renaissance building from the years 1892/93. The outer facade is rusticated on the ground floor and there are arched windows on the upper floor between Corinthian double pilasters . An attic balustrade , which was originally decorated with figures, is arranged over the profiled main cornice along the entire length of the house . They were Apollo , Asklepios , Hygieia and Minerva , carved from Loretto stone by the sculptor Anton Paul Wagner . A barrel-vaulted, stucco-structured entrance zone leads through a wooden door with original etched panes - and through another door of the same design straight on into the courtyard and on the right via a staircase with an iron tendril railing between two free-standing stucco marble columns behind it to the spacious foyer of the mezzanine floor. The foyer and vestibule are equipped with an arcade and pilaster arrangement with terrazzo floors that continues the facade structure. The original porter's lodge is on the left in the stone house wing and in the courtyard wing behind it is a consulting room with the old, all-round wooden furniture. In the vestibule you can find a bust of Emperor Franz Joseph I in a richly ornamented niche and on the side wall of the same a votive plaque with the inscription: “This house of the Imperial and Royal Society of Doctors in Vienna became under the government of Sr. Majesty of Emperor Franz Joseph I. during the presidium of Dr. Theodor Billroth built by the architect Ludwig Richter and opened on October 27, 1893. "
The side staircase is framed by set columns. There are composite pilasters and a stucco ceiling in the foyer . The reading room on the ground floor is equipped with partly original bookshelves and a gallery with turned columns.
The large, rectangular lecture hall is located on the upper floor and is raised by a circumferential gallery . The wall is structured by blind round arches between pilasters. Above that there are stitch caps with plaster busts of famous doctors. The ceiling is coffered and decorated with rich stucco. On the balustrade are two marble busts showing Joseph Skoda and Theodor Billroth . In the garden wing is the small, richly ornamented conference room with two busts and a painting.
Library
The establishment of a library has been one of the top goals since the Society of Doctors was founded. Most medical journals were acquired through barter, donation, or made available by members who have subscribed to them. Book donations from members, patrons and institutions (such as the Austrian court library and Prince Klemens Metternich) increased the holdings, so that a librarian was appointed in 1840, the year the library was founded. From 1900 onwards, more and more donations came from clinics and institutes of the General Hospital in Vienna. After the First World War , the contacts of the association members were used to persuade foreign sources to participate in the library inventory, which resulted in increases from Uruguay, London University and the Rockefeller Foundation. The increasing shortage of space made numerous moves of the library necessary throughout history, until it finally moved into the Billrothhaus in the 9th district in Vienna, where it is one of the most valuable specialist libraries in the world today.
With Isidor Fischer as librarian from 1923, exchange contracts could be concluded with German institutions, which in turn guaranteed the library a quota of specialist journals. In exchange, the Society of Doctors offered their magazine - the "Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift". After the Anschluss, Isidor Fischer had to go into exile, but shortly before that he was able to publish a book about the Society of Doctors in which he is not mentioned as an author. With the fall of the Society of Doctors in Vienna during the Second World War, Adolf Irtl took over its business through the "Vienna Medical Society". As part of the dissolution of the association, its fortune was estimated and the value of the library was classified as "priceless". In 1946 the "Vienna Medical Society" was dissolved again, the Society of Doctors re-established and the library reactivated. The contacts to other countries were re-established, which resulted in further growth, e.g. B. by the Allied Commission for Austria, UNRRA , WHO and foreign university libraries.
Large parts of the library were transferred to the Branch Library for the History of Medicine on permanent loan in 1967 and 2003. In 1967 over 30,000 tapes were handed in, of which around 10,000 were identified as duplicates . In 2003, around 26,000 medical historical monographs and 300 historical medical journals were added, which were not integrated into the old inventory, but set up separately and documented as a special feature the medical development in the countries of the former Habsburg monarchy.
The range of magazines increased steadily (1967: 573 current magazines), but the change in the reading behavior of the new generation of doctors and the scarcity of financial resources made it necessary to rethink. For this reason, from 1997, the print magazines were gradually phased out and replaced by electronic magazines. A literature service was set up which could provide members of the society with medical articles from the holdings. This service has been expanded again and again and now includes a Medline research system, around 700 electronic journals and a catalog of historical holdings. In addition, the Billrothhaus has been offering e-learning advanced training courses for doctors in cooperation with the Austrian Medical Association since 2004, and since 1998 all scientific sessions have been recorded on video and made available to members on the Billrothhaus website.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Karl Heinz Tragl: History of the Society of Doctors in Vienna since 1838 . as the history of medicine in Vienna. Böhlau, 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78512-5 .
- ↑ a b Federal Monuments Office of the City of Vienna (ed.): Decision on the status of the Billrothhaus under monument protection . Vienna July 28, 2008.
- ↑ a b c d Czerny Wolfgang (edit.): Dehio-Handbuch: Die Kunstdenkmäler Österreichs: Topographisches Denkmälerinventar . II. To IX. and XX. District. Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-7031-0680-8 , p. 412 .
- ↑ The construction technician . Central organ for the Austrian building industry. Vienna January 5, 1894, p. 1-2 .
- ↑ The construction technician . Central organ for the Austrian building industry. Vienna January 12, 1894, p. 17-19 .
- ↑ a b c Josephine Library and medical history holdings of the University Library of the Medical University of Vienna. Retrieved August 25, 2013 .
- ↑ a b Friedrich Ribar: The history of the library of the Society of Doctors in Vienna: 1837–1987 . House work. Vienna 1990.
- ^ Karl Hermann Spitzy: Viennese contributions to the history of medicine . Ed .: Society of Doctors in Vienna: 1837-1987. Brandstätter, Munich / Vienna 1987, p. 5 .
- ^ Bauer B. and Gschwandtner M .: Permanent loan of 26,000 medical-historical monographs from the Society of Doctors in Vienna and the library of the Institute for the History of Medicine . In: biblos. Contributions to books, libraries and scriptures . tape 53 , no. 1 , 2004, p. 162 .
- ^ Billrothhaus.TV. Retrieved August 24, 2013 .
Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 56.4 " N , 16 ° 21 ′ 22" E