Rudolf Virchow Hospital

Rudolf Virchow Hospital
Sponsorship	State of Berlin , corporation under public law
place	Berlin-Wedding
state	Berlin
Country	Germany
Coordinates	52 ° 32 '31 "  N , 13 ° 20' 36"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 32 '31 "  N , 13 ° 20' 36"  E
CEO	Heyo K. Kroemer
Care level	Maximum care hospital / emergency center
Affiliation	Humboldt University , Free University
founding	1906
Website	www.charite.de

Entrance on Augustenburger Platz, 1910

Entrance on Augustenburger Platz, 2012

The Rudolf Virchow Hospital in the Berlin district of Wedding was built from 1899–1906 as a municipal hospital based on a design by Ludwig Hoffmann in a pavilion construction. The listed complex originally contained fifty free-standing buildings and was designed as a garden city. The hospital was greatly changed by the war destruction and new buildings. The clinic has been part of the Charité since April 1, 1995 and bears the official name Charité Campus Virchow-Klinikum .

history

Due to the rapidly growing population in the industrial north-west of Berlin, it was necessary to build a fourth large urban hospital there. After Moabit , Wedding and Gesundbrunnen were incorporated in 1861 , the population more than doubled from 826,000 in 1871 to 1,888,000 in 1900. At the turn of the century there were only three municipal hospitals in Berlin: the Friedrichshain hospital , which opened in 1874 , the Moabit hospital , opened in 1875, and the Am Urban hospital , which opened in 1890. Furthermore, the magistrate used 300 beds in the Charité and also referred the population to denominational houses such as the St. Hedwig Hospital, founded in 1846 on Große Hamburger Straße .

The Prussian regulation, which has existed since 1835, required cities with more than 5,000 inhabitants to operate “a sufficient number of sanatoriums and nursing homes on their own”. The Protestant houses of the Lazarus Hospital (1873) and the Paul-Gerhardt-Stift (1898) as well as the Kaiser and Kaiserin Friedrich Children's Hospital (1890) already existed in Wedding . In 1914 the Jewish Hospital on Iranische Straße was added.

Not least because of the statutory health insurance introduced in 1883 and scientific progress, there was an increased need for hospitals, so that hospitals began to build hospitals on an unimagined scale in the capital. In 1893 the II. Urban insane asylum was established in Lichtenberg (Herzberge) , in 1907 the mental institution in Berlin-Buch with the III. Insane asylum with 40 buildings as well as the convalescent home with 30 buildings and an old people home with 21 buildings. From 1897 to 1914 the Charité was rebuilt and rebuilt with the Pathological-Anatomical Museum in 1899, the Psychiatric Clinic in 1901, the Children's Clinic in 1903 and the Surgical Clinic in 1904 as well as the two internal clinics from 1907 to 1912 and the most modern university dental clinic in Europe in 1912. In 1904 the Westend Hospital was established , in 1906 the Pankow Municipal Hospital, the Humboldt Hospital in Reinickendorf and the Auguste Viktoria Hospital in Schöneberg, and in 1914 the Oskar Ziethen Hospital in Berlin-Lichtenberg and the Köpenick Hospital . At the beginning of World War I in 1914, Berlin had six city hospitals.

Opening in 1906

The name of the building had been determined for a long time, because on Rudolf Virchow's 80th birthday in October 1901, the city council decided to name the building after him. The opening took place on September 17, 1906 by Kaiser Wilhelm II. And numerous dignitaries such as the Lord Mayor Martin Kirschner , the mayor and doctor Paul Langerhans , the chief president of the Brandenburg province August von Trott zu Solz , the widow of the namesake Ferdinande Amalie Rosalie Virchow, who died in 1902 and two of his sons. After visiting the hospital, she wrote a thank you letter to building officer Hoffmann.

"Dear Mr. Building Councilor! [...] I wanted to thank you that, according to your statements, this wonderful work was created under your direction, which bears the name of my beloved husband. I returned from the visit with a deeply moved and thankful heart, knowing that the Rudolf Virchow Hospital would remain the most splendid monument, also in the spirit of the deceased, that can ever be placed on him. [...] "

When the Rudolf Virchow Hospital opened in 1906, it was considered the most modern health care facility in Europe and served as a model for later new hospital buildings.

The first patients after the inauguration of the hospital came from the Urban Hospital; 70 patients with sexually transmitted diseases were admitted to the two clinics for skin and sexually transmitted diseases. The two clinics were managed by Wilhelm Wechselmann (1860–1942) and Abraham Buschke (1868–1943). Wechselmann gained importance through the clinical trials of salvarsan in syphilis therapy carried out in his department .

For the first occupation of the clinics some well-known Berlin doctors could be won: the surgeons Otto Hermes (1864–1928) and Moritz Borchardt (1868–1948), the internist Alfred Goldscheider (1858–1935) head of the hospital from 1906 to 1910, the gynecologists Alfred Koblanck (1863-1928) and the pathologist David von Hansemann (1858-1920). Since the opening there have been two surgical departments, each with 180 beds and two operating theaters, headed until 1920 by Otto Hermes and Moritz Borchardt, who in 1920 became director of the III. Surgical University Clinic at Moabit Hospital changed.

The surgeon Richard Mühsam came to the hospital in 1920. He also worked at the Institute for Sexology , where he attempted to “cure” homosexuality through testicular transplants. The surgeon Ernst Unger took over the second surgical department at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital in 1919. He became known for the first fundamental work on kidney transplantation .

After the end of the First World War, the immense increase in sexually transmitted diseases made it necessary to increase the number of beds in the two dermatological hospitals, in which 455 beds were available for male and 265 beds for female patients. After the dermatological department had been rebuilt, it was headed by Heinrich Löhe (1877–1961) from 1925 onwards .

In 1931, 25 years after the hospital was founded, the number of patients treated had doubled from 15,500 (1907) to over 30,000, just as the range of operations had expanded.

From 1933

From 1933 onwards, the departments were reorganized significantly and combined with a reduction in the number of beds to form an internal , external and dermatological department. In addition, a urological and a psychiatric - neurological department were created. Furthermore, the large hospital wards were replaced by rooms for six to eight patients. Around 1936 the clinic had a maximum capacity of 2500 patients (number of beds planned: 1900) and was therefore one of the top hospitals in Berlin.

From 1935 until the end of the Second World War , the Rudolf Virchow Hospital with the General Institute against Tumor Diseases was an institute for the treatment and research of cancer under the direction of the radiologist Heinrich Cramer, which was under the board of trustees of Ferdinand Sauerbruch in 1933 –1934 was founded. The institute worked very closely with other clinics and combined surgical, radiotherapy and scientific-experimental aspects.

The surgical clinic was headed from 1933 to 1934 by Willy Usadel (1894–1952) and Walter Sebening. Between 1935 and 1937 August Rütz (1894–1937) led the surgery, which was continued after his death by Wilhelm Fick (1898–1981), who was Ferdinand Sauerbruch's senior physician until 1937 and later became chief physician at a private clinic in Munich. Werner Kressin (born 1902) temporarily headed the department during the war missions of the chief physicians. On August 1, 1933, the urological department was opened, which until the provisional end of 1945 was under the direction of Karl Heusch . It was relocated to Karlsbad in 1943, and the entire inventory was lost. After returning to Berlin, Heusch began setting up an alternative clinic and setting up the urology department at the Jungfernheide hospital until he finally went to Aachen in 1948. His employees at the clinic were senior physicians Werner Forßmann (1904–1979) and Krafft.

From 1945

Logo of the Virchow Clinic, 1996

Due to the war damage, the number of beds fell to 400. From September 1945 Walter Mirauer (1882–1948) headed the surgical department and, after his sudden death, Wilhelm Heim (1906–1997), who was medical director until his retirement in 1971. Another urological specialist station with more than 40 beds was built and managed by Kurt Felkl (1918–2013).

With the opening of the new ward block of the surgical clinic in 1962, a surgical-urological department was also created, which was headed by Hans Wulsten (1927–1995) from 1970 when the department became independent as a urological clinic. In 1983 Wulsten was elected Medical Director of the Rudolf Virchow Hospital and remained so until his retirement in 1992.

During the division of Berlin, the Rudolf Virchow Hospital served as the University Hospital of the Free University of Berlin from the 1980s .

Since 1995

The Rudolf Virchow Hospital has been part of the Humboldt University since 1995 and has formed the Charité's Virchow Clinic (CVK) campus since 1997. The associated extensive new construction and renovation work did not end until 1998 and made the location the most modern clinic in Europe.

In mid-2003, the Berlin university medicine was restructured again: The Charité merged with the medical faculty of the Free University of Berlin. The decision arose mainly from the tense budget situation in the state of Berlin, which gave the merged Charité a budget for research and teaching of 98 million euros.

On March 3, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Berlin, the first contact point in Berlin for SARS-CoV-2 suspected cases was set up.

Medical supplies

According to the 2016 hospital plan of the State of Berlin, the clinic has 1289 beds in the university area. It is designated as one of the six Berlin emergency centers with increased demands on performance, infrastructure and reception capacity, as well as one of the three locations with special isolation stations for highly contagious, life-threatening diseases and the regional radiation protection center.

So that research, teaching and health care can be better organized, the Charité has founded 17 Charité centers (spelling: CharitéCentren ). More than 100 clinics and institutes work within the centers. Most of the Charité centers are organized across locations. This is intended to promote the integration of the locations. In addition, all Charité centers are to be given independent management with responsibility for results. The following Charité centers are located at the clinic:

The campus is the seat of the German Heart Center with 198 beds (hospital plan 2016), which uses the eastern parts of the building. This also includes the "Gästehaus Axel Springer" hotel established in 1988.

Location and architecture

Wedding plot

Site plan 1906

View along the central promenade

The magistrate of Berlin decided on the location in Wedding on an extensive area without trees and bushes between the north bank on the Berlin-Spandauer Schifffahrtskanal , Augustenburger Platz , Amrumer-, Föhrer Straße and the experimental and training institute for brewery on Seestraße . From the early 1820s to the 1850s, the concealing shop was located here , which from 1873 was located at Müllerstrasse 81 and was finally relocated to Rüdnitz near Bernau in 1908 . Thus, the area owned by the city was available. Rudolf Virchow (1821–1901), who played a key role in the planning, campaigned for the location . Originally, the town planning officer Hermann Blankenstein , Hoffman's predecessor as town planning officer, was in charge of the planning, which he completed by the time he was handed over to Hoffmann in 1896. Hoffmann had other plans that he could realize with Virchow's support. He oriented himself towards existing hospitals such as the Eppendorfer Hospital opened in 1889 or the Johannstadt City Hospital in Dresden, which was inaugurated in 1901, and therefore favored the pavilion style.

The availability of the 26  hectare property and its location played a role in the location decision, but also the fact that the Prussian Institute for Infectious Diseases was established in 1901 directly opposite . At the suggestion of Robert Koch , an infection department was set up in the Rudolf Virchow Hospital. The architect Ludwig Hoffmann began in 1897 with the design, according to which the large hospital was built from 1899–1906. 57 individual buildings for 2000 beds as well as 700 apartments for unmarried nurses and technical staff were created. There were 25 apartments for married doctors. The construction costs amounted to 19.1 million marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 118 million euros). The Virchow Hospital was the last hospital building to be built in the pavilion style.

Garden city for the sick

main building

Day clinic pavilion

Water tower with boiler house

“The architect succeeded in combining the logical organization of a modern hospital, which was designed for 2,000 patients, with a convincing urban planning arrangement. The lovingly and friendly designed buildings, which open to light, air and sun, should actively contribute to the recovery of the sick, so that one spoke of a 'garden city for the sick'. The Rudolf Virchow Hospital illustrates the endeavors of Wilhelmine society to solve social problems in an exemplary and aesthetically convincing way. For his human, socially responsible architecture, Ludwig Hoffmann chose predominantly baroque designs that are reminiscent of the familiar and arouse the feeling of security. These include tiled mansard or hipped roofs , simple plastered facades, striped ashlar, pilaster strips and small lattice windows. "

- Entry in the Berlin State Monument List

Even before construction began, Hoffmann had the 425 meter long longitudinal axis, the “backbone of the complex”, laid out and mostly planted with linden trees from the zoo , which had hidden the view of the monuments in Siegesallee . Two thirds of the area remained undeveloped and was used for the creation of parks and gardens. The almost mirror-symmetrical layout is entered through the main building on Augustenburger Platz, which is reminiscent of baroque palace buildings. This is followed by the main courtyard with its garden, before one strides through the representative central wing, crowned by a copper-clad roof tower, and reaches the longitudinal axis. The middle wing currently houses the German Heart Center . The longitudinal axis traced a life path when it was created, starting with the maternity hospital to the left of the entrance. The hospital pavilions were lined up along the main avenue, initially four rows for women, followed by the operating theater , pharmacy and bath house, and further north the supply buildings with the boiler house and the water tower that could be seen from afar . This is followed by six or seven rows of pavilions for men. At the end of the main avenue was the pathology with the chapel and a pavilion for the "restless sick". The mourning avenue led from the chapel to the cemetery on the other side of Seestrasse. On the south side were the quarantine departments for diphtheria , scarlet fever , whooping cough and typhoid, and next to it a recreation park and children's playgrounds. The houses for skin diseases and venereal diseases , which were located on both sides of the main building, were of particular importance .

Situation from 1996

Central building Mittelallee 10

The hospital was badly damaged by the fighting during the Second World War, several outbuildings and half of the pavilions were destroyed by bombs and the number of beds dropped to 400. Large parts of the clinic were already destroyed by a carpet attack in September 1943. During the reconstruction in the post-war period , many of the historical buildings disappeared and were replaced by functional buildings from the 1960s and brutalist buildings from the early 1970s. In 1973, an eight-storey new building for internal medicine was built on Sylter Strasse, which is now used as an administration building. A systematic renovation began in 1974, to which the last pavilions on Hauptallee fell victim despite being listed as a historical monument, and from 1979–1996 they were replaced by two block-like assemblies, the north and south braces.

There was public protest against the demolition of the northern pavilion in 1988, but without being able to prevent the destruction. The hospital has been a university clinic since 1987, which necessitated further construction work. At the western end of the main axis, the semicircular complex of buildings for research and teaching was built based on designs by the architects Volker Cornelius, Hannelore Deubzer and Jürgen König. The entrance building, used by the German Heart Center, three pavilions at the end of Hauptallee, the former pathology (currently: Medical Library of the Charité ), the quarantine pavilions on Föhrer Strasse (currently used by the "Gästehaus Axel Springer"), have been preserved Building for skin and venereal diseases on Amrumer Straße as well as the building of the service wing, the boiler and machine house with the former kitchen and laundry room and the water tower.

literature

• Ludwig Hoffmann : Rudolf Virchow Hospital, Berlin . In: Neubauten der Stadt Berlin , Volume 6. Wasmuth, Berlin 1907 (in the online archive of the Architekturmuseum der TU Berlin , contains 50 panels with interior, exterior and detailed views, floor plans and sectional drawings.)
• Matthias Donath, Gabriele Schulz: Mitte district, Wedding and Gesundbrunnen districts . Ed .: Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (=  monument topography Federal Republic of Germany. Monuments in Berlin ). Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2004, ISBN 3-937251-26-X , p. 201 ff .
• Bodo Möhr: Rudolf Virchow Hospital. 1906-1981. 75 years of the Rudolf Virchow Hospital . Rudolf Virchow Hospital, Berlin 1981.
• Fritz Munk: Medical Berlin at the turn of the century . Ed .: Klaus Munk. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich / Berlin 1979, p. 150 ff .
• Dietlinde Peters: The Rudolf Virchow Hospital, Augustenburger Platz 1. Ed .: Historical Commission to Berlin. Berlin 1990, p. 357-375 .
• Slatomir Joachim Wenske: The development of urological clinics in Berlin. A contribution to the history of medicine in Berlin . Berlin 2008 ( diss.fu-berlin.de [accessed on March 1, 2016] dissertation at the Free University of Berlin).
• Robert Frank: The mutilation of a monument. Ludwig Hoffmann's “garden city for the sick” in danger. In: The time . No. 13/1987.
• Bernhard Meyer: A garden city for the sick. In 1906 the Virchow Hospital was opened . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 4, 2000, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 118-123 ( luise-berlin.de ).
• Kathrin Chod, Herbert Schwenk, Hainer Weisspflug: Rudolf Virchow Clinic . In: Hans-Jürgen Mende , Kurt Wernicke (ed.): Berliner Bezirkslexikon, Mitte . Luisenstadt educational association . tape 2 : N to Z . Haude and Spener / Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89542-111-1 ( luise-berlin.de - as of October 7, 2009).

Web links

Commons : Virchow-Klinikum  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
• Charité Campus Virchow-Klinikum. Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 2019, accessed on February 5, 2019 . 
• Wedding - Virchow Clinic. In: Project Baerwaldbad. Zukunftsbau GmbH 
• Rudolf Virchow Hospital - Ludwig Ernst Emil Hoffmann. In: bildindex.de. 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Hospital plan of the State of Berlin 2016 . P. 60 (PDF; 3.7 MB)
2. ^ Bernhard Meyer: A garden city for the sick. In 1906 the Virchow Hospital was opened . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 4, 2000, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 118–123 ( luise-berlin.de - here p. 123).
3. ↑ Institute for Sexology (1919–1933)
4. ^ ^{A b c d} Slatomir Joachim Wenske: The development of urological clinics in Berlin. A contribution to the history of medicine in Berlin . Ed .: Dissertation at the FU-Berlin Berlin. Berlin 2008, p. 89 ff . ( diss.fu-berlin.de [accessed on March 1, 2016]).
5. ↑ Hans Rudolf Berndorff : A life for surgery. Obituary for Ferdinand Sauerbruch. In: Ferdinand Sauerbruch: That was my life. Kindler & Schiermeyer, Bad Wörishofen 1951; cited: Licensed edition Bertelsmann, Munich 1956, pp. 456–478, here: p. 460.
6. ^ Charité - University Medicine : History of the Charité Campus Virchow-Klinikum. In: charite.de. Retrieved February 25, 2019 . 
7. ↑ charite.de List of CharitéCentres, accessed on February 23, 2012
8. ↑ formation of ChariteCentren is progressing , press release of the State of Berlin of 30 September 2005, accessed September 13, 2009
9. ↑ Slatomir Joachim Wenske: The Formation of urological clinics in Berlin. A contribution to the history of medicine in Berlin . Ed .: Dissertation at the FU-Berlin Berlin. Berlin 2008, p. 93 ( diss.fu-berlin.de [accessed on March 1, 2016]).