Psychiatry Museum (Bern)

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Bern Waldau Pfrundhaus2

The Psychiatry Museum in Bern , also known as the Swiss Psychiatry Museum in Bern, has been in the Pfründerhaus on the Waldau site since 1993 . The museum idea came up on the initiative of Walter Morgenthaler on the occasion of the 1914 state exhibition in Bern , in which the "Bernese cantonal insane asylum Waldau" was also involved. The Psychiatry Museum Bern Foundation, founded in 1990, is the owner of the museum.

history

As early as the 15th century there was an infirmary for patients with infectious diseases on the Breitfeld . From 1744 to 1749 there was a madhouse here to accommodate the mentally ill. The patients were simply locked away without therapeutic treatment and at times displayed as a public attraction. The actual "insane asylum" Waldau was founded in 1850. It was only then that psychiatric treatments and scientific research up to today's psychiatry began . The history of mental illnesses and their treatment is presented in the museum.

building

The beneficiary's house was built between 1755 and 1765 by the architect Ludwig Emanuel Zehnder on behalf of the Bern Council. Initially, it was used to take in skin patients and beneficiaries (old age) and was used in 1891 for the patients of Waldau until 1980 after the outpatient hospital was moved to the Inselspital . Since its renovation and expansion from 1989 to 1991, the Psychiatry Museum has been set up there. The horseshoe-shaped building has a bent hip roof. The main entrance in the middle of the south facade to the street opens into a sandstone portal with stone carvings by Johann Friedrich Funk the Elder . In the north-facing courtyard, a two-sided flight of stairs opens up the higher-lying entrance due to the terrain. The building is listed in the building inventory of the city of Bern as an object worthy of protection with parcel number 1930 in the Waldau group.

Exhibits

The Waldau by Adolf Wolfli

The psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler began collecting historical objects and documents in two rooms of today's “Old Clinic” in 1914, when the mentally ill became interested in creative work. Models of outdated treatment methods, obsolete items such as lidded baths, straitjackets, belts, escape objects and institutional documents were stored in one room. In the second room there were works by patients, namely the pictures of Morgenthaler's protégé Adolf Wölfli . Images and texts were particularly important to Morgenthaler for the preparation of his habilitation thesis "Transitions between drawing and writing in the mentally ill" (1918). Even after the publication of his book «Adolf Wölfli. A mentally ill as an artist »(1921), Morgenthaler expanded the museum's holdings by 1930. In 1987, the then clinic director Wolfgang Böker began archiving the collection, which had been disorganized for many years, with the help of other employees. In the renovated and newly expanded beneficiary's house, the exhibits were then exhibited according to contemporary conservation principles. In addition to the Morgenthaler collection with historical equipment and illustrative material for the training of nursing staff as well as its collection of patient work, documents and pictures of the general history of psychiatry are presented. Portraits of the former directors with their special achievements, pictures of residents, patients and carers can be seen. The well-known former residents of Waldau Adolf Wölfli, Robert Walser and Friedrich Glauser with their works , are also shown, who also painted furniture with colored pencils .

Exhibitions

In addition to the permanent exhibition, there are also temporary exhibitions. Currently until February 26, 2021, this is the exhibition of figures: "Figures from the fund of the Psychiatry Museum", with works by Heinz Lauener, Philippe Saxer, Louisa Johanna Morgentau. As well as drawings from the Morgenthaler collection, by Oskar Bütikofer, Hans Fahrni , Ernst Bollin, Karl Schneeberger, C. Schwartzlin-Berberat, and others. a.

Web links

Commons : Psychiatrie-Museum (Bern)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

  • Walter Morgenthaler: The care of the mentally and mentally ill . H. Huber, Bern 1930, p. 283 .
  • Walter Morgenthaler: Adolf Wölfli, a mentally ill person as an artist . Compagnie de l'Art Brut, Paris 1964, p. 153 .
  • Marie-Louise Käsermann, Werner Jutzeler, Andreas Altorfer: Shaping experience: Pictures from the Morgenthaler collection . Huber, Bern 2014, ISBN 978-3-456-85517-2 , p. 95 .
  • Marie-Louise Käsermann: Wherever "Matto rules": to the uproar when the novel of the same name by Friedrich Glauser was published . Swiss Psychiatry Museum Bern, Bern 2013, ISBN 978-3-9523998-0-4 , pp. 56 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Beneficiary House. Retrieved May 6, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Long virtual tour through the permanent exhibition. Retrieved May 4, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Figures and drawings from the Morgenthaler Collection. Retrieved May 6, 2020 .

Coordinates: 46 ° 57 '54 "  N , 7 ° 29' 3.8"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred and three thousand four hundred and eighty-two  /  201547