Provincial lunatic asylum Halle-Nietleben
The provincial insane asylum in Halle-Nietleben was a mental hospital in Saxony-Anhalt. Important parts of the architecture, which is significant in terms of medical history, such as the isolation houses, the farm building and parts of the “communications”, were demolished in the early 1990s.
history
Construction site
It was decided in 1825 to build an asylum near the city of Halle (Saale) . An old vineyard plot on the left bank of the Saale was selected for this. However, the start of construction was delayed until 1841. The establishment of the sanatoriums was provisionally completed in 1854. The Nietleben building site “in the proper vicinity and distance of a large city, not on a mountain, not on the plain (...) but therefore a hill or high plateau with a suitable area all around on one level ”was the trend-setting for other construction projects for years. Both the chosen distance to the city, but also the lack of complete isolation from the urban environment, shaped the sanatorium buildings of the time. Ultimately, the construction was almost twice as expensive as estimated.
Buildings
The curable and terminally ill people were accommodated in different buildings. The buildings were divided into a sanatorium and a nursing home. In the 19th century, a division between a men's and a women's area was common. 75 patients could be enrolled in each gender range. A total of six buildings were erected as a rectangle in the first construction phase. In the inner courtyard of the rectangle there were economic facilities. A little outside an isolation ward for “maddened patients” was built, there was also a pathology department, a dissection room, laboratories and a pharmacy.
In the first few years of operation there was also care for mentally ill children. The general care unit for adults could accommodate 125 patients. There were four separate dining rooms (sanatorium, nursing home, women and men).
Nietleben was considered the most modern psychiatric institution in Europe. The novelty was the generosity of the facility: wide corridors, plenty of space for patients and fewer nurses than usual were necessary.
From 1887 the construction of ten patient villas for 40 patients each from upper classes began (previously there was no separation of layers). In 1910 the construction of a "safe house" for 58 "criminally insane" began, followed in 1914 by the construction of an infection hospital for women.
Up until the First World War there were frequent problems with poor drinking water quality. It was taken directly from the Saale, which is why there were several cholera epidemics. The chief physician even died of one in 1866.
The end of the sanatorium and today's use
From 1925 the city of Halle began selling land for the nursing home and from 1934 the Army and Air Force Intelligence School and the General Maercker barracks were built in the immediate vicinity . In the course of the rearmament policy of the National Socialists , the institute had to cease operations in 1935 and the buildings were incorporated into the military complex. 1050 patients were transferred to the Altscherbitz, Kreuzburg / OS and Weilmünster sanatoriums, among others. Many were murdered in the following years as part of Operation T4 .
After the Second World War until around 1991, the old sanatorium buildings were used by the GSSD . During the occupation, a third of the buildings were demolished. The two sanatoriums and nursing homes as well as the main and director's building, the director's villa, the private patient villas and the church of the Halle-Nietleben provincial insane asylum were retained for the time being. In 1994 the city of Halle (Saale) and the state of Saxony-Anhalt acquired the location from federal assets. From 1995 after the renovation of the z. Partly very polluted location, in the area of the barracks area, parts of the new residential area Heide-Süd . The rest of the site has been converted into a science park. The buildings of the former news school are now used by various departments of the Martin Luther University.
In the course of the conversion, several listed institutional buildings were demolished and buildings for the Halle technology and start -up center , the Fraunhofer Center for Silicon Photovoltaics and the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials were erected there. From 2012 to 2013, three of the former patient villas were renovated in accordance with listed buildings and are now used as boarding houses and guest houses for scientists and guests of the Weinberg Campus .
See also
literature
- Heiko Worlitschek: The history of the sanatorium and nursing home Nietleben near Halle on the Saale (1844-1935). Dissertation at the Medical Faculty of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 2004.
Web links
- Private website on the history of the Nietleben sanatorium
- Private photo gallery, summer 2003
- Private photo gallery, autumn 2013
Individual evidence
- ↑ CF Förster: About the construction and organization of the insane asylums. In: Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie , 13th year 1856, p. 339 ff.
Coordinates: 51 ° 29 ′ 32.1 ″ N , 11 ° 56 ′ 21 ″ E