Imperial Hospital
The Imperial Hospital or Hofspital was located in Vienna's 1st district, Inner City, on today's Ballhausplatz across from the Hofburg . It served to care for sick and old employees of the court and their relatives.
history
The Martinspital in front of the Widmertor was the first hospital for disabled employees . This was destroyed by the Turks in 1529 and was never rebuilt. As a substitute, the educator of the pages of Ferdinand I , Diego de Serrava, founded the Hospital of Holy Mercy for 12 men and women each. For this purpose, on September 10, 1537, he acquired a house with a garden between the Minorite Church and the Hofburg from the Minorites.
After the death of Diego de Serrava in 1545 and that of his wife Anna of Bohemia and Hungary in 1547, Ferdinand I placed the hospital under the patronage of the sovereign. He increased the number of places in the foundation by 36, and 20 orphan girls were accepted, who should be looked after and trained here. To finance what is now the imperial hospital, the Wolkersdorf rulers in the Weinviertel , among others , which were owned by Anna, and from 1564 on the goods of the former Martin hospital .
The Imperial or Court Hospital was the first and largest of a series of hospitals donated by Emperor Ferdinand I. He was late in fulfilling a point in his grandfather's will, Maximilian I , which had not yet been fulfilled. The fact that this hospital must have been a matter close to his heart is shown by the fact that he also took care of more minor details of the hospital's operations. So those responsible for the hospital turned to him during the construction work to expand the hospital with the request to provide the copper sheet needed for the roofing. The request to replace the damaged kettles with new ones was addressed to him personally.
In 1558, the Wolkersdorf estate, which had previously been administered directly by the court hospital, was separated from it and the income was to be passed on to the hospital via the salt office . However, administrators who ran into their own pockets, armed events, mismanagement, the bureaucracy and the lack of interest of the successors of Ferdinand I in the interests of the court hospital reduced and delayed the flow of money, so that the hospital had to pile up a huge mountain of debt in order to continue to be able to pass.
First Emperor Charles VI. took on the imperial hospital again. Under him and the reign of his daughter Maria Theresa of Austria , the economic situation improved significantly.
Between 1717 and 1719, today's Federal Chancellery was built on an undeveloped area of the Hofspital and in 1746 the Ballhaus , which was to give its name to today's Ballhausplatz, in the courtyard of the hospital . In 1758 the Imperial Hospital was moved from its previous location to Rennweg in 1737 by Emperor Karl VI. Dreifaltigkeitsspital, which was founded and was acquired on March 30, 1754 on the instructions of Maria Theresias. The Dreifaltigkeitsspital, in turn, was moved to the Spanish Hospital in Roßau (today it houses the seminary in Boltzmanngasse ). The Church of the Holy Cross on Rennweg was built as a hospital church between 1755 and 1763.
In 1782, under Emperor Joseph II, the Imperial Hospital was closed. The building was first rented to the Galician Life Guard as a barracks and after its dissolution the German Arcièren Life Guard was barracked here, which is why the former hospital church is now called the Guard Church . In 1897 it was handed over to the Polish Order of Resurrectionists for pastoral care, so that today it represents the center of the Polish community in Vienna. After the relocation of the Arcièren Life Guard to the Lower Belvedere , the former hospital building was used as a residential building, in which Karl Lueger had his notary's office in 1881 . The barracks were demolished in 1891.
During the demolition work of the old imperial hospital in 1903, the Renaissance architecture reappeared after it had been covered by brickwork during renovation work in Maria Theresa's time. The vacant lot resulting from the demolition was only closed after the Second World War.
In 1583, some of the rooms in the east wing were rented to the Hofkammerarchiv , founded in 1578 . In 1848, for reasons of space, it was relocated to the newly constructed archive building at Johannesgasse 6 between June 26 and August 19 under the direction of Franz Grillparzer .
On the occasion of the abolition of the Imperial Hospital, the Imperial Hospital Fund was founded by Emperor Joseph II. This was equipped with all means that were connected with the former court hospital (sales proceeds from land and so on). Until 1926, poor and sick people were supported from its income.
Footnotes
literature
- Ernst Novotny: History of the Vienna Court Hospital, Association for Regional Studies of Lower Austria and Vienna, 1978
- Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. Volume 1: A – Da. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-218-00543-4 .
Web links
- Wolkersdorf Castle, from page 6 (PDF; 125 kB)
- The Leibgardekaserne. District Museum Landstrasse, archived from the original on January 6, 2014 ; accessed on January 4, 2018 .
- Imperial Hospital