Elisabeth Hospital (Kassel)

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The Elisabeth Hospital ( also Hospital St. Elisabeth ) in Kassel was one of the first infirmaries in Kassel. At the corner of Steinweg and Oberste Gasse, behind the Fridericanum and opposite the Ottoneum , the facade is still preserved today.

history

The old Elisabeth Hospital (9) on a city map by Matthäus Merian , from 1646, but based on old models
The Elisabeth Hospital seen from the Zwehrener Tor

In 1297, Mechthild von Kleve , the wife of Landgrave Heinrich I of Hesse, founded the Elisabeth Hospital. It was a simple rectangular two-storey house with a stepped gable , on the upper floor of which a hall served as a sickroom and chapel. The hospital or chapel was consecrated to Saint Elisabeth , ancestor of the House of Hesse and patron saint of the sick. It was not until the city was expanded in 1330, with the construction of the Freiheit district, that the hospital was located inside the city walls. The Emmerichsklause must have been in the immediate vicinity. It was built in 1383 by Landgrave Hermann II and was consecrated "unsir liebin frauwin sancte Marien and saint frauwin sente elsebed" . This hermitage disappeared around the same time as the first building of the Elisabeth Hospital.

In 1586, Landgrave Wilhelm IV had a new building built by his architect Christoph Müller. It is a renaissance building with a simple exterior. The walls of the L-shaped complex made of raw rubble stones with corner blocks were originally plastered. Since the time of the new building, the hospital is no longer a custody station for lepers to protect the population, but a retirement home. A relief of the Hessian coat of arms from 1587 and a sandstone sculpture of St. Elisabeth attached.

During the Second World War , the building burned down and was torn down except for the front. When building new social housing inside, two stair towers were also lost. Today the Elisabethhospital houses apartments as well as a restaurant.

Infirmaries and hospitals in Kassel

After the Elisabeth Hospital had been in the city limits since 1330, a new infirmary was needed far from the city. The new hospital was roughly on the site of today 's Schönfeld Palace . This leprosarium is referred to in the sources as Ferenspital. In 1364 the Siechenhof was opened in front of the gates of the Untereustadt , whose Gothic chapel only had to give way to a street widening in the 1950s. There were various smaller hospitals in the city itself. The city's first modern hospital was the HÔPITAL DES FRANCOIS REFUGIÉS of the Huguenot community in Oberneustadt , which was built around 1770 . It was not until the Kriebel disease epidemic in 1770 that the need for a large city hospital became clear. Friedrich II had the Kassel Charité built by Simon Louis du Ry from 1772 to 1785.

literature

  • Alois Holtmeyer: Alt Cassel. Marburg 1913.
  • Georg Dehio , Ernst Gall : Northern Hesse. Munich 1960.
  • Städtische Kliniken Kassel (Ed.): 200 years Charité - Städtische Kliniken Kassel. Kassel 1985, ISBN 3870130202 .
  • Wolfgang Hermsdorf: A look back at old Kassel Volume 1, Kassel 1978.

Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 49 ″  N , 9 ° 29 ′ 56 ″  E