Katharinenspital (Heilbronn)
The Katharinenspital in Heilbronn was a municipal hospital , which went back to a foundation of the city council from 1306 and formed the origin of the Heilbronn municipal hospital system. The hospital foundation was independent until 1803 and then until 1829 it was part of the foundation administration, which was made up of clergy and poor administration . The Katharinenspitalkirche also belonged to the Katharinenspitalanlage , which had emerged from an older chapel in 1483, became Protestant during the Reformation and was rebuilt in the Renaissance style after a fire in 1624 as the Holy Trinity Church . The church was used for church services until 1807. The Katharinenspital became obsolete in the 19th century with the construction of new hospitals and poor houses. From 1862 to 1871 the hospital buildings and the church were then demolished.
history
The oldest verifiable health care facility in Heilbronn was the special hospital near St. Jakobus am Graben, which was located outside the city walls at Sülmertor. This facility was probably created when the Heilbronn Barefoot Monastery was founded in 1272 and, as was customary for hospitals, was built on a flowing water, namely the Pfühlbach . At the infirmary there was a Jacob's chapel and its own burial place. The storehouse of this infirmary and the benefactor's house of the clergyman of the Jakobskapelle were located in Jakobsgasse within the city walls. The infirmary was in the hands of the city and already had a constitution similar to that of the later hospital. In the infirmary one probably gained the experience that must have been necessary before the foundation of the larger hospital in the city. The infirmary continued to exist after the hospital was founded.
The buildings chosen for the construction of the hospital within the city walls probably go back to the Franconian royal court, which is probably the oldest settlement within the medieval city limits. The court then came to the Hirsau Monastery via the Counts of Calw, the ownership structure has been fragmented over time.
Foundation 1306
On April 23, 1306, the Heilbronn council founds a Katharinenspital in Heilbronn. At the time of the foundation, the hospital building had already been built and had the customary purpose of the time, the care and accommodation of the poor, sick and children. The hospital was located on the Heilbronn city wall directly on the Neckar on the right side of the bridge gate, in a typical hospital location on the river and gate. The river was important for the drainage of sewage and faeces, the location at the gate prevented that sick people coming from outside had to be guided through the city. The hospital was equipped with various goods and foundations, the original scope of which, however, is only partially known.
From the beginning, the hospital was a municipal facility without the influence of the church or monasteries, but also without its own legal capacity. St. Catherine , who was also the patroness of other hospitals in the surrounding area, was elected as the patroness of the hospital . The priest Heinrich von Herrenberg was appointed the first hospital caretaker, after him two city councilors took over the hospital maintenance on a voluntary basis. The nursing staff supervised the hospital master, who ran the hospital economically. There were strict regulations for the hospital master, among other things he had to be married because his wife was always in charge of the kitchen and the staff. The city council, however, always had the final say in all fundamental decisions regarding hospital operations. Up until the Reformation, there was a preacher at the hospital as spiritual support for the residents and inmates.
Development by the early 17th century
The hospital initially had economic hardship. In 1311, for example, a hospital courtyard in Böckingen was sold in an emergency . In the 14th and 15th centuries the hospital was able to acquire important goods outside and inside Heilbronn. In 1350 a chapel was first mentioned to the east of the hospital, from which the Katharinenspitalkirche developed over time, at the latest through a Gothic extension in 1483. In 1415 the Böllinger Mill was given to the hospital . In 1423 the hospital acquired the piece of land called Grien with the Sülmer mill, but sold it to the city of Heilbronn the following year. To this day the piece of land is still called Hospitalgrün . The hospital also acquired property abroad, including 1489 forest near Stocksberg and 1496 forest near Stettenfels as well as numerous vineyards. A specially appointed cellar master was in charge of the hospital's own vineyards . The hospital was given further ownership by the fact that old people bought themselves into the hospital for their pension in return for surrender of all their goods. The oldest surviving admission document that documents this comes from the year 1395. Poor old people were instead obliged to work in the hospital. The care of the poor and the elderly was not limited to the people living in the hospital, but the hospital was also responsible for caring for the other poor and elderly in the city, for which the hospital also had the right to administer and distribute the alms centrally . There was a poor people's infirmary for the homeless; in times of war, refugees from the unpaved surrounding areas were taken in at the hospital.
Cripples, orphans and foundlings were housed in the Seelhaus , which forms the northern part of the Spitalhof . The Seelhaus goes back to a foundation by Zeisolf von Magenheim († 1402) in the late 14th century and initially had its own nurses and masters before it was merged with the hospital. Fortune from another Zeisolf foundation from 1395 can be traced back to the 18th century and was probably not fully absorbed until 1756 in the construction of the municipal orphanage (later the Bläß'sches Palais ).
The sick in the hospital were treated in one large room, regardless of illness or gender. In 1469, Lukas Scheltz , a city doctor was appointed for the first time , who was also responsible for patient treatment in the hospital; from 1529 there was a separate hospital doctor . The oldest evidence of a surgical intervention in the hospital comes from 1529. There was a separate safe-keeping room for the mentally ill in the hospital before a madhouse was built in the hospital courtyard in the 16th century to keep them safe. The hospital's equipment has been continuously improved through donations and foundations. The former mayor Hans Erer donated a bathing room for the hospital in 1496.
The churchyard near St. Johann , which is located directly next to it, was part of the hospital and was abandoned as early as 1480, but was re-occupied shortly before the Reformation. In addition, there was also the special cemetery at the St. Jakobs Chapel north outside the city walls (on today's Paulinenstraße) until about the Reformation. The Jakobskapelle was a branch of the Heilbronn Kilianskirche and was endowed with extensive benefices by the mayor Kunz Leyder in 1409 , so that a benefactor, who probably had his apartment in the beneficiary's house in the later Jakobsgasse, could perform the church activities there. From 1521 to 1526, the later Heilbronn reformer Johann Lachmann was the pastor of St. Jakob. After the Reformation, those who died in the hospital were buried in the cemetery on Weinsberger Straße .
The Reformation was introduced in Heilbronn in 1531 through a referendum. The service at the now Protestant hospital church was taken over by the Kilian church. In 1593 the hospital owned the following properties: the hospital building with a church and various outbuildings, the Oberhof in Heilbronn with several houses and outbuildings, 222 acres of vineyards in Heilbronn and Böckingen, 67 acres of meadows, 2 acres of herb gardens, 40 acres of forest in the area, the Böllinger Mühle and the Böllinger Hof. The hospital's possessions were intended in particular for its care. Grazing, fishing and hunting rights were associated with most of the property.
Around 1620 the hospital church was renovated, with mayor Philipp Orth donating both the pulpit and furniture as well as enrichments to the liturgy . Accordingly, teachers and four students should sing Christian songs before and after the sermon.
Fire of 1624 and subsequent reconstruction
In the early morning of November 18, 1624, the main building of the hospital burned down. The fire also spread to the hospital church and the annex of the computing room. The guards of the parish church tower and the hospital masters were punished because they had not given the fire alarm in time. Since the reconstruction, which took place from 1624 to 1628, the Protestant hospital church was called Dreifaltigkeitskirche . The Gothic choir of the church continued to point to the east; to the west, a benefactor's house with a Renaissance gable facing the Neckar was built onto the church. A common, ornate portal was on the south side. In times of need of the Thirty Years' War , the church often served the services of the rural communities who had fled to the safer city. From 1701 to 1803 the city of Heilbronn hired its own hospital preacher for the Holy Trinity Church, each with a contract term of six years.
The old infirmary in front of the Sülmertor was burned down by Swedish troops in 1634. In 1666 the hospital foundation built a hospital and poor house in its place.
Change to Paulinenstrasse
The previously independent hospital foundation was integrated into the poor administration in 1803, which was merged with the clerical administration for foundation maintenance in 1829 .
From 1831 to 1834 a new hospital was built in Paulinenstrasse next to the older military hospital, as there was fear of a new wave of cholera. When the cholera remained away, the hospital became the Paulinen Hospital as a hospital for servants, workers and journeymen. Medical progress and the growth of the city in the course of industrialization then led to the end of the Katharinenspital and the relocation of the entire health care system to Paulinenstraße.
In 1862, the Katharinenspital was sold to the city for demolition and part of the building was demolished for a road break. In 1866 the hay barn and barn of the Katharinenspital were demolished for the construction of the new Neckar bridge. By 1871, the remaining buildings of the Katharinenspital including the church were demolished.
The road from the new Neckar bridge (at the location of today's Friedrich-Ebert-Brücke ) to Kaiserstraße took place at the place of the farm buildings . The main post office, which was destroyed in the Second World War, was inaugurated in 1876 on the site of the hospital church and the beneficiary's house. Since the Second World War there have been commercial buildings on the former hospital area. At the place of the Spitalkirche and Pfründnerhaus there was a branch of the textile department store C&A until January 2012 , after its demolition the Marrahaus was built there.
In 1864 the city built a new hospital in Paulinenstrasse, whereupon the two previous buildings were used for other purposes. The hospital building at Sülmertor then served as a military hospital and was used as a smallpox house from 1883. The hospital became known nationwide in 1891 under the direction of Paul Mayer, a son of Robert Mayer , through the so-called "Spitalkrieg", a dispute about the conditions in the hospital in courts and in the press, in which the mayor of Heilbronn, Paul Hegelmaier , who was happy to complain , was involved was. After Mayer resigned in 1894, Hegelmaier appointed the surgeon Gustav Mandry as head of the hospital, making the Heilbronn hospital the third specialist hospital in Württemberg. Under Mandry's leadership, the hospital developed very positively and expanded several times. However, the hospital buildings on Paulinenstrasse were destroyed in the air raid on December 4, 1944 .
After the Second World War, the hospital grounds on Paulinenstrasse were built over with the Heilbronn Technical School Center , while the city acquired an old Wehrmacht hospital on Jägerhausstrasse and set up the Jägerhauskrankenhaus in it, with some specialist departments being relocated to other buildings in the city. Later the Klinikum am Gesundbrunnen was added, which after several extensions and renovations replaced the Jägerhauskrankenhaus so that it was demolished and a residential area built over it.
Since it was founded, the hospital had its own hospital archive, which was placed in the registry of the foundation administration after the hospital lost its legal capacity in 1829. The ravages of time, thieves and vermin have quickly decimated the archive material, so that when the first document book for the city of Heilbronn was compiled in 1904, only “melted remains” of the hospital archive were mentioned. The last archival material that had stood the test of time was destroyed in the air raid on December 4, 1944.
A figure of Catherine as a relic
A sculpture of St. Catherine, which is now in the Haus der Stadtgeschichte (formerly in the Heilbronn Lapidarium ), was presumably once in the Katharinenspital and came into the possession of Hans Clemens Coy in the 19th century, who placed it in his courtyard on the corner of Fleinerstrasse and Katharinenstrasse Has. The figure is about a meter high and carved from yellowish sandstone. She is holding a sword that comes to rest on a broken wheel. The sculpture is said to have been created around 1515.
The hospital foundation today
The hospital foundation, which is again independent, has (as of 2012) capital of 20.9 million euros, including numerous properties, especially in the Neckargartach region, thanks to which the foundation survived the inflation of 1923 . A large part of the foundation's assets will be used from 2012 to finance the new building of the Heilbronn hospital.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christhard Schrenk , Hubert Weckbach , Susanne Schlösser: From Helibrunna to Heilbronn. A city history (= publications of the archive of the city of Heilbronn . Volume 36 ). Theiss, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-8062-1333-X , p. 13 f .
- ↑ Knupfer, page 29, no. 28: "The council ... donates a hospital"
- ↑ Steinhilber 1956, pp. 294/295.
- ↑ Steinhilber 1956, p. 242.
- ↑ Uwe Jacobi: Heilbronn - A lost cityscape , Heilbronn 2000, p. 13
- ↑ Bärbel Kistner: C&A closes the gates in Kaiserstraße . In: Heilbronn voice . January 6, 2012 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on April 8, 2012]).
- ↑ No Edeka in the former C&A in Heilbronn . In: Heilbronn voice . March 1, 2012 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on April 8, 2012]).
- ↑ From Katharinenspital to Municipal Hospital 1952, p. 120.
- ↑ Gräf 1983, No. B33
- ↑ Over 40 million euros in assets. City manages 26 foundations at heilbronn.de, January 11, 2012 (accessed April 8, 2012)
literature
- Helmut Schmolz, Hubert Weckbach: Heilbronn. The old city in words and pictures. Konrad-Verlag, Heilbronn 1967. Volume 2, p. 21, image no. 22 Katharinenspitalkirche, south portal, 1865.
- Eugen Knupfer (edit.): Document book of the city of Heilbronn . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1904 ( Württemberg historical sources . N. F. 5)
- Wilhelm Steinhilber: The health system in old Heilbronn 1281–1871. Published on the occasion of the 650th anniversary of the foundation of the Kathrinen Hospital in Heilbronn (April 23, 1306). City archive Heilbronn, Heilbronn 1956 ( publications of the archive of the city of Heilbronn . Issue 4)
- Wilhelm Steinhilber: The Heilbronner Katharinenspital . In: Swabia and Franconia. Local history supplement of the Heilbronn voice . 4th year, no. 1 . Verlag Heilbronner Demokratie, Heilbronn February 1, 1958 (continued in No. 2 of March 1, 1958. ZDB -ID 128017-x ).
- City of Heilbronn (ed.): From Katharinenspital to Heilbronn City Hospital , Heilbronn 1952.
- Hartmut Gräf: Unterländer Altars 1350–1540. Heilbronn 1983.
Web links
Coordinates: 49 ° 8 '30.8 " N , 9 ° 12' 58.7" E