Sanatorium St. Blasien

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Sanatorium St. Blasien, Autochrome photograph 1914

The Sanatorium St. Blasien was a lung sanatorium in St. Blasien in the Black Forest , which existed from 1881 to 1969 and offered inpatient treatment as well as preventive and preventive treatment for tuberculosis .

Foundation and expansion

At the end of the 1870s, the lung specialist Paul Haufe (1851–1917) trained in Davos was looking for a suitable location in Germany for his own sanatorium to treat pulmonary tuberculosis, which was rampant in the 19th century due to urbanization. Before the introduction of anti-tuberculosis antibiotics , few treatment options were available. The pulmonologist Hermann Brehmer (1826–1889) founded high altitude therapy for tuberculosis in the open mountain air in Görbersdorf, Silesia in 1854 . This therapy was based on the wrong approach, residents of high altitudes suffered less often from manifestations of tuberculosis. This view was in contrast to the previous medical doctrine. Nevertheless, Brehmer achieved considerable success with his concept due to his structured approach and consistent application of the medical standard, which led to numerous follow-up facilities nationally and internationally. Peter Dettweiler (1837–1904) expanded the treatment concept in his sanatorium in Falkenstein im Taunus , which was founded in 1876, with absolute rest in the form of long reclining cures . The better blood circulation in the lungs while lying down promoted self-healing to a certain extent. Pneumothorax treatment, which emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, and lung surgery remained the only therapeutically effective further developments until the widespread use of antibiotic combinations. Radiation therapy was completely abandoned in the absence of evidence of effectiveness.

In 1878, Haufe decided to go to St. Blasien in the southern Black Forest. The protected high valley at around 800 m altitude was known for its dry and thermally stable climate. A promontory also keeps the wind that often prevails in the foothills of the Alps , especially the stressful foehn . The fir forests reduced the amount of dust. The practical freedom from fog ensures above-average tanning levels even in winter. This enabled the facility to operate all year round. In the 1960s, the Freiburg Meteorological Office believed that it could define forty-four positive factors for protecting and stimulating the local St. Blasian climate.

In 1878, Paul Haufe built a villa on a plot of land acquired from the Baden domain administration above the locality, in which he initially worked as a general practitioner. From 1881 he took guests to the cure. On November 23, 1882 he began to occupy a small attached sanatorium for just twelve patients all year round. Depending on how you look at it, the founding year of the St. Blasian spa system is set at 1878, 1881 or 1882. The legend of years of climate studies by Paul Haufe before the start of construction is part of marketing . Almost at the same time, a competing facility was built in the town center in the Kurhaus St. Blasien founded by Otto Hüglin in 1882, which had more capital. Although the Kurhaus St. Blasien had more beds and a broader list of indications for internal illnesses including psychiatric ailments, Haufe's small sanatorium was able to hold its own. Haufe used his connections to Davos and offered acclimatization cures before and after high mountain cures. The two well-known and successful institutions initiated further sanatoriums in St. Blasien. After Otto Hüglin withdrew from St. Blasien in 1925, the place developed into an exclusive tuberculosis health resort for four decades.

Expansion of the sanatorium

Sanatorium garden, autochrome photograph 1914

Paul Haufe withdrew briefly from the management of the sanatorium in 1895, which he expanded from 12 to 40 beds and sold to his successor, Medical Councilor Albert Sander (1862–1944). Under Albert Sander and his co-partner, the Menzenschwander doctor Ernst Meier (1868–1910), transferred to a GmbH in 1905 , the sanatorium was expanded to a capacity of 95 rooms. The new building was built between 1900 and 1908 according to the latest hygienic principles and balneological-climatological knowledge of the time, with a high structural standard and exemplary fire protection. The X-ray cabinet was opened in November 1909. According to the medical histories, the first pneumothorax procedures according to Carlo Forlanini took place in 1913 . The focus was on a wealthy international clientele. 1914 Medizinalrat Sander handed over the reins to the habilitated pulmonologist Adolf Bacmeister , the 1916 extraordinary professor and 1933 to the ordinary honorary professor of internal medicine at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg was appointed. Albert Sander remained chairman of the board. The western extension was completed in the summer of 1923. From this point on, the sanatorium consisted of three independent, interconnected buildings that formed a rectangle open to the south.

With the beginning of the First World War and again during the National Socialist era , the upscale European customers were largely absent. St. Blasien became a health resort for the middle class who could no longer afford a medical treatment in Switzerland. Out-of-town quarters were created for a growing, semi-inpatient clientele. Bacmeister believed that day-care tuberculosis treatments, supplemented by social medical care, would prevail in the future.

Therapeutic offer

Medical consulting room
Lounge area

Until 1924 Bacmeister was subordinate to a senior physician and two assistant physicians. The former director Sander remained connected to the sanatorium as a consultant . Already in Sander's time, specialist articles and books were published by the institution that received international attention and recognition.

The sanatorium became known to the public for its open lounges in the fir forest. The sanatorium had a three and a half meter wide terrace in front of the 50 m long central building. The rooms for the spa guests facing south and west had their own loggias with winter windows , based on the Davos model . The two lounge halls in the forest were connected via two bridges. They could be aligned to the south or north with roller shutters according to seasonal requirements. The largely flat Philosophenweg made it possible to take strolls to viewpoints with little effort.

In the west wing there was the medical department with medical consulting rooms, an X-ray cabinet , radiation therapy and an operating room, in which from 1914 mainly pneumothorax treatments were carried out. There was also a throat, nose and throat doctor's treatment room . A hydrotherapy bath section was added to the west wing .

Radiotherapy turned out to be the wrong path. In animal experiments, regressive tuberculous lung infiltrations under radiation in rabbits were simulated by the formation of radiation fibrosis . The X-ray treatment of pulmonary and larynx tuberculosis , published in a monograph in 1924 , lasted only a few years. This was followed by active pneumothorax treatment and, shortly before the war, thoracoplasty (artificially induced collapse of the lung in advanced tuberculosis, which is no longer used today). The increasingly complex operations were carried out after the war by the Swiss thoracic surgeon Hans Good from the Wehrawaldklinik in Todtmoos . From 1957, the St. Blasien Clinic cooperated with the newly established surgical department of the Robert Koch Clinic in Freiburg im Breisgau.

Equipment of the sanatorium

Luxurious and generously dimensioned leisure facilities, gardens and a representative multifunctional dining room with six thematic forest paintings by the painter Adolf Hildenbrand from the years 1932–1934 ensured a dignified ambience. The four large paintings on the north wall of the dining room show Black Forest landscapes, which in turn can be interpreted as a sequence of elements in the four elements air, earth, fire and water. Each of the elements stands for a therapy offer of the sanatorium. The sky or the air (the sky over Bernau in the Black Forest ) stands for the pneumothorax, the earth for the reclining cure, the fire (mountain view of St. Blasien) for the caustic or radiation therapy and the water (the Schluchsee ) for the Hydrotherapy. The sequence of elements is supplemented by two further thematic images. The reaper in the field stands for the resection and a view of the Upper Rhine Valley for high altitude therapy. A smaller picture with a field of mallow on the south wall is supposed to symbolize the hemoptysis . Hildenbrand's expanded sequence of elements is important evidence of the symbolistically oriented art of the late Weimar Republic . The cycle was initially welcomed by the National Socialist press.

The high-quality furniture was obtained from the Munich workshops for home furnishings .

time of the nationalsocialism

With the establishment of the National Socialist regime, the European clientele increasingly stayed away. The professionally respected chief physician Bacmeister increasingly integrated himself into the Nazi regime . He became an advisory doctor and medical officer in the Navy for tuberculosis. Between 1939 and 1945 he also headed the marine hospital in the closed college of St. Blasien as chief physician . Bacmeister became a fleet doctor for the reserve and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords on May 16, 1944 for his services . More serious and burdensome was his collaboration with the SS . Bacmeister coordinated with him subordinate tuberculosis doctors at a conference in 1943 the infamous sulfonamide experiments in the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Adolf Bacmeister died on December 7, 1945 in St. Blasien.

Karl Leisner was not - as is often rumored - arrested in the St. Blasien sanatorium, but in a municipal facility, the prince-abbot-Gerbert-Haus.

post war period

The French occupying power took over the sanatorium in 1945 and used it - renamed Sanatorium Alsace - initially to treat deportees and concentration camp prisoners from France and Belgium. The management and the staff were left in place. During this time, German patients were cared for in Haus Baden. After the deportees were repatriated, members of the French army were taken in. Most of the east wing burned out on July 24, 1947. On January 15, 1951, the restored and restored sanatorium was reopened. The head doctor Emmler died a few weeks after the reopening. His successor Otto Wiese was replaced in 1953 by medical advisor Fritz Brecke († 1984) after a public scandal. In 1969 the sanatorium was closed due to the decline in tuberculosis in Germany and falling demand. After another renovation, a newly established specialist hospital for lung diseases, the St. Blasien Clinic, was set up in the buildings in 1971 and was included in the hospital requirements plan. It was managed by Fritz Brecke until 1974 and maintained a tuberculosis ward.

Senior Doctors

  • Wilhelm Haufe (1883–1895)
  • Albert Sander (1895-1914)
  • Adolf Bacmeister (1914–1945)
  • Arthur Emmler (1951)
  • Otto Wiese (1951–1953)
  • Fritz Brecke (1953-1969)

Prominent patients

literature

Web links

Commons : Sanatorium St. Blasien  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A Kneipp cure for St. Blasien. In: Die Zeit of April 18, 1969
  2. ↑ Baths Almanac. English Edition, Rudolf Mosse, Berlin 1912.
  3. ↑ L. Rickmann: Our experiences about artificial pneumothorax in pulmonary tuberculosis. In: Contributions to the clinic of tuberculosis and specific tuberculosis research , 1920, Volume 46, Issue 1, pp. 28–37.
  4. ^ Wilhelm Wolfart: 100 years of the St. Blasien Clinic. 1983, p. 104.
  5. ^ Joseph August Beringer : Adolf Hildenbrand. In: The art and the beautiful home , Volume 69 (1934), pp. 296-299.
  6. ^ Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz, Gerda Stuchlik: Women and Fascism in Europe. The fascist body. Centaurus-Verlags-Gesellschaft, 1990, p. 161.
  7. ↑ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. S. Fischer, 1997, p. 203.
  8. ^ Wilhelm Wolfart: 100 years of the St. Blasien Clinic. In: Ärzteblatt Baden-Württemberg , March 1984 edition, p. 105.
  9. ↑ Jeremy Dauber: The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem. The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Chapter 22, Google eBook, October 8, 2013 [1]
  10. ↑ Johannes Baur: The Russian Colony in Munich 1900-1945. German-Russian Relations in the 20th Century. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 1998, p. 84.
  11. ↑ August Sauer, Georg Stefansky, Hermann Pongs, Hans Werner Pyritz: Euphorion , Volume 38, CC Buchner, 1937, p. 210.
  12. ↑ Louis-Ferdinand Céline: From one castle to the other. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1994.

Coordinates: 47 ° 45 ′ 49 ″  N , 8 ° 7 ′ 43 ″  E