Otto Wagner Hospital

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Otto Wagner Hospital, since 2020: Penzing Clinic

The Otto Wagner Hospital (slang term, since 2020 officially clinic Penzing ) located in the 14th Vienna district Penzing , on the Baumgartnerhöhe . The clinic is in its organizational form, a merger of five formerly independent of Vienna Public Health; to the include Social Education Center "Baumgartner Höhe" , the Neurological Hospital of the City of Vienna "Maria Theresa Schlössel" , the nursing home "Sanatorium Road" and the Psychiatric Hospital "Baumgartner Höhe" and the Pulmologische Center »Baumgartnerhöhe" . The individual departments of these institutions remained unchanged.

history

Leopold Steiner monument below the church with the inscription: The creator of the institution Leopold Steiner, member of the n.ö. Regional committee, 1907

After three years of construction, the facility was opened on October 8, 1907 as the Lower Austrian state sanatorium and nursing home for the mentally and mentally ill "Am Steinhof " . At that time it was one of the most modern and largest psychiatric clinics (formerly known as sanatoriums and nursing homes ) in Europe. The clinic was planned in the construction department of the Lower Austrian provincial government under the direction of Carlo von Boog and redesigned by Otto Wagner , the leading Viennese architect of his time. The mental hospital "Mauer bei Amstetten" , built a few years earlier and also planned by Carlo von Boog, served as a model . Construction work was carried out by the Lower Austrian State Building Authority, while Leopold Steiner was in charge of construction management .

The long-time director of the institution was Julius Wagner-Jauregg .

After the First World War , the sanatorium department for private patients in the west was closed and a pulmonary sanatorium, independent of the psychiatric institution, was built in its area .

time of the nationalsocialism

In the time of National Socialism , the institution served the " destruction of life unworthy of life ". An unspecified number of patients classified as "hereditary diseases" were forcibly sterilized . In 1940 about 3,200 patients were transported to extermination institutions from the “sanatorium and nursing home”, which was completely overcrowded with 4,300 patients, as part of the T4 campaign . Most of them were killed in the Hartheim killing center . Nine of the now empty pavilions were converted into the youth welfare institution "Am Spiegelgrund "; This also included an institution for child euthanasia called the children's department .

In “Pavilion 23”, also vacated by “Aktion T4”, a “Laboratory for Asocial Women” was opened on November 1, 1941, and they were prescribed “work therapy” from kitchen work to heavy work such as transporting coal or paving the streets. If the rigid disciplinary rules were violated , the women were initially given apomorphine injections that caused nausea, vomiting and diarrhea . Afterwards they were locked in "correction cells" made entirely of concrete. In the index cards of the institution, the cases of three inmates are noted that in a concentration camp were sent. In the course of the Brandt campaign , numerous inmates were again killed in 1943.

Headquarters

Post-war and present

From the lung sanatorium, the hospital with the name Pulmonologisches Zentrum was built in the 1960s , from which important and innovative developments in this field have emerged. The same applies to the orthopedic department, which has developed from a facility for the treatment of bone tuberculosis into a modern orthopedic department with a surgical-orthopedic focus on joint replacement. The sanatorium and nursing home for the mentally and mentally ill became the Baumgartner Höhe psychiatric hospital , also in the 1960s .

In 2012 it became known that the medical operation should be relocated by 2020 at the latest. A broad opinion was formed about the re-use, with the involvement of the mass media. As part of a mediation with the citizens' initiatives to preserve the area, the City of Vienna set up an expert group on the structural future of the area. On April 3, 2013, the group of experts issued recommendations on how to proceed, which above all preclude the sale of parts of the site.

In March 2018 it was announced that the Otto Wagner Hospital would be the new location of the Central European University (CEU), as it was moving from Budapest to Vienna. The future campus of the CEU will occupy a third of the area. Operations began in autumn 2019, initially in Quellenstrasse in Vienna's 10th district, Favoriten ; full operation should start in the winter semester 2022/23.

Culture

investment

Aerial 1932
Memorial and Art Nouveau theater

The extensive complex of the former psychiatric hospital of 26 pavilions and ancillary buildings, which occupies the eastern part of the site (entrance: Baumgartner Höhe 1), is built in terraces on both sides of a central axis on the southern slope of the Gallitzinberg. On the central axis up the slope are the administration building, which surrounds a forecourt in the manner of a courtyard in a U-shape, behind it the society house and theater (so-called "Art Nouveau theater") built behind a wide ramp and an outside staircase, above it the wide kitchen building and at the top the Church of St. Leopold , built according to plans by Otto Wagner , which can be reached via two stair ramps along the central axis. To the east and west of the central axis, three pavilions are grouped on each terrace on predominantly U-shaped floor plans, which are designed in raw brick construction with echoes of Neo-Biedermeier and recourse to classicism, with smooth surfaces and clear shapes dominating. Some of the pavilions have lattice verandas extending over one to two storeys on the south side. The centrally positioned entrances are protected by original canopies. Lattice doors and staircase grilles are executed in secessionist forms.

On the green area in front of the Art Nouveau theater, the 772 light steles of the memorial for the victims of Spiegelgrund remind of the children and young people who were murdered in the National Socialist euthanasia facility " Am Spiegelgrund " between 1940 and 1945 . The permanent exhibition The War Against the Inferior of the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance is located in Pavilion V.

Kurhaus of the former pulmonary center

The western part of the sanatorium and nursing home (later pulmonary center), originally conceived as a sanatorium for well-to-do patients, occupies the western part of the area (entrance: Sanatoriumstrasse 1). Ten pavilions are symmetrically grouped on four terraces along the central axis, on which the Kurhaus with ballroom and indoor swimming pool are arranged on a hill and above it the kitchen building; only the administration building has moved eastwards from the axis. The pavilions are similar in floor plan and structure to those of the psychiatric hospital, but like the main building with plastered facades and tile applications; lattice verandas are arranged on the south sides.

A wall running along the Heschweg surrounds the Steinhof grounds , which extend north of the Otto Wagner Hospital, and, like the entire complex, was built in 1904-07.

Church of St. Leopold

Church at the Steinhof

The Church of St. Leopold , better known as the Steinhof Church , which stands at 310 m above sea level on the slopes of the Gallitzinberg as the crowning glory of the entire complex, is considered the most important sacred building in Art Nouveau. It was built in the years 1904–1907 and is considered the main work of Otto Wagner.

Art Nouveau theater

The Art Nouveau theater was originally designed as a society house, later used for theater performances, concerts and events, and has been empty for years.

Otto Wagner Gallery

The Otto Wagner Gallery has set itself the task of bringing art into psychiatry. In close cooperation with artists and patients, new vernissages and projects are constantly being created.

transport

As is not unusual in larger Austrian hospital facilities, an in-house narrow-gauge railway was also operated on this hospital site for the transport of food, rubbish and laundry to and from the individual pavilions. A special feature (e.g. compared to a similar railway in Lainz ) was that the locomotives were operated electrically via a contact line. The narrow-gauge railway was shut down in 1965 after about sixty years of operation. One original locomotive is in the Technisches Museum Wien (restored) and one in the Railway Museum Schwechat (unrestored). Some wagons (two food transport wagons and one laundry transport wagon) are exhibited in the field and industrial railway museum in Freiland, Lower Austria.

literature

sorted alphabetically by author

  • Maria Auböck, Mara Reissberger: The gardens of the Otto Wagner Hospital in Vienna. A report examining the history of the garden . In: Die Gartenkunst  14 (1/2002), pp. 91–122.
  • Eberhard Gabriel: 100 years of the Baumgartner Höhe health location: From the sanatoriums and nursing homes at Steinhof to the Otto Wagner Hospital . Facultas Universitätsverlag, ISBN 978-3-7089-0061-2 .
  • Manfred Hohn : Railways in Austria's hospitals . Railway-Media-Group, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-902894-60-1 .
  • Christian Schuhböck : Otto Wagner Hospital "Am Steinhof" , Kral-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-99024-208-7 .

Web links

Commons : Otto-Wagner-Spital  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. New names for hospitals: KH Nord from 2020 "Klinik Floridsdorf" . Retrieved April 6, 2019.
  2. The opening of the new state sanatorium for the mentally ill. (With a photograph). In:  Wiener Bilder , No. 42/1907 (XII. Year), October 16, 1907, p. 4 middle. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrb;
    Opening of the Lower Austrian Provincial Sanatorium for the Mentally Ill. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Abendblatt, No. 15492/1907, October 8, 1907, p. 3, bottom right. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp.
  3. ^ Wien.gv.at: Leopold Steiner, artwork in public space ; accessed on June 24, 2015
  4. ^ Helga Amesberger: Work shy and morally degenerate . Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna / Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-85476-596-7 , p. 103 .
  5. Susanne Mende: The Viennese sanatorium “Am Steinhof” during the time of the Nazi regime in Austria. (PDF) Retrieved on January 20, 2014 (excerpt from the book NS-Euthanasie in Wien by Eberhard Gabriel and Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds.), Pp. 61–73).
  6. derstandard.at: Central European University moves from Budapest to Vienna - derstandard.at/2000093002537/Central-European-University-uebersiedelt-von-Budapest-nach-Wien . Article dated December 3, 2018, accessed December 3, 2018
  7. orf.at: CEU first moves to favorites . Article dated March 22, 2019, accessed March 22, 2019.
  8. orf.at: Soros University comes to Otto Wagner Hospital . Article dated March 12, 2018, accessed March 12, 2018.
  9. orf.at: Soros-Uni: lease for 99 years . Article dated April 9, 2018, accessed April 9, 2018.
  10. ^ Field and Industrial Railway Museum : Steinhof Electric Material Railway ; accessed on March 15, 2016
    Herbert Loskott, Johann Kössner: Materialbahnen in Viennese hospitals. In: Railway. ISSN  0013-2756 ZDB -ID 162227-4 . Born 1959, No. 8, pp. 123–128 (with track plan).

Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 31.5 ″  N , 16 ° 16 ′ 46.6 ″  E