Vitos Herborn
Vitos Herborn is a psychiatric clinic in Herborn , which was founded in 1911 as a state sanatorium and nursing home. The facility houses the clinic, the accompanying psychiatric service, the school for health professions in Central Hesse and a psychiatry museum. The entire facility is under monument protection .
Location and description
The core of the facilities is limited to the area south of the street Zum Rehberg and west of the Austraße in Herborn. It is located on the eastern slope of the Rehberg and is correspondingly descending. It is characterized by the extensive tree population on the site.
As a whole, the development of the area is under monument protection. Access to the site is from the administration building on Austraße. The architecture of the buildings is characterized by the steep hipped roofs, the renunciation of historical architectural forms, the attempts to develop quasi-ornamental building forms from details (e.g. the staircases protruding in the facade front), and the consistent free-standing arrangement of the buildings.
The buildings are connected by tunnels that start from the old heating building. It is known that the inhabitants sought protection in these shafts during air raids in World War II .
organization
Vitos Herborn is the sponsoring company of five institutions:
- Vitos Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
- Vitos Clinic for Psychosomatics
- Vitos Clinic Rehberg, Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy
- Vitos accompanying psychiatric services Herborn
- Vitos School for Health Professions Central Hesse (in association with Vitos Herborn and Vitos Weilmünster)
Vitos Herborn is a subsidiary of Vitos GmbH , the sole shareholder of which is the State Welfare Association of Hesse .
history
Foundation as a state sanatorium and nursing home
The story of Vitos Herborn begins with the establishment as a state sanatorium and nursing home in 1911. It was due to the continuous increase in the number of people who were housed in psychiatric hospitals. The number of these had almost tripled from 40,375 in 1877 to 120,872 in 1901. Against this background, the Wiesbaden district association had already launched a tender in 1903, which included the search for building land with a size of 100 to 120 acres. Since more floor space was required for the realization of a psychiatric institution in the modern pavilion style , as it was for the first time in Germany at the institutions in Marburg and Düsseldorf-Grafenberg, especially to ensure long-term economic efficiency and reception capacity, a second tender followed, the 400 comprised up to 500 acres of land. Of the twenty municipalities that took part in the tender, three were shortlisted: Montabaur, Hadamar and Herborn. Many requirements were decisive for this, including good rail connections, high soil quality for agriculture, safe water supply, but also the accessibility of higher schools for the children of the doctors and the director. In the end, the decision was made in favor of Herborn, as the city promised the construction of a new waterworks and left the building land partly free of charge.
On April 27, 1906, the municipal parliament decided to build the third psychiatric institution in Herborn. The architects from Berlin were Heino Schmieden and Julius Boethke, who are experienced in the construction of hospitals and who are nationally and internationally respected . The building license was granted in January 1908. After three years of construction, the official opening took place on March 1, 1911. However, the first patients did not move into the institution until the end of June 1911. At this point, however, large parts of the facility had not yet been completed.
The first director was Richard Snell , who until then had headed the state sanatorium and nursing home in Weilmünster . Most of the staff came from Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg and had to sleep in the patient rooms for the first few months because the staff apartments were not yet ready. The last buildings of the new construction phase, the women's half-quiet house and the men's restless house, were completed in 1914.
Architectural concept
The basis for the architectural concept was the pavilion style , which was modern in hospital construction at the time . The facility was designed for 1,000 to 1,200 sick people. The area was divided into functional zones. These were the patient buildings, the staff living quarters, the administration area, the farm with the nursery and the heating plant.
“The aim of the architects was to meet all the requirements of the building program as perfectly as possible and to give the building a clear expression to the outside, but still to give the overall appearance a painterly expression so that it fits into the Integrate the overall picture well. "
The accommodation of the patients in free-standing buildings on the park-like area and the creation of a central area with a ballroom allow opportunities for community as well as for social retreat.
The First World War
Even with the mobilization before the start of the war , serious cuts in the institution were announced. These resulted from the summons of both doctors and almost all capable nurses. With Snell there were only two other doctors left, who were also faced with growing patient numbers. The replacement consisted of young men who had been postponed from military service due to physical ailments and men who were no longer compulsory due to their age and who generally had no experience in dealing with psychiatric patients. In addition, fluctuation was very high, as the armaments factories paid significantly better salaries. The nursing operations have been restricted accordingly.
The second major problem during the war was the strained food situation, which ended in starvation at the institution. Overall, the food situation in the entire German Reich was poor; the war soon turned from a quick war of movement to a war of positions. The military leadership had overestimated the capacities of German agriculture and underestimated the dependence on food imports. Food had to be rationed and it was hardly possible to buy it on the free market due to the sharp rise in prices. Residents and staff of psychiatric institutions were at the bottom of the nutritional hierarchy. Initially the military or the workers in armaments factories were supplied.
In Herborn, the situation could be eased somewhat by the attached manor, the proceeds of which were used to care for the patients. The prison management in Herborn tried to counter the effects of the shortage by various measures, such as the introduction of meatless days or the lowering of bread and potato allocations. From 1916 the nutritional situation was so bad that dandelion , Komfrey and beetroot were used to care for the patients in order to prevent at least further weight loss. The catastrophic food situation culminated across the empire in the turnip winter of 1916/17. While in 1914 63 deaths were registered in a patient population of 448 people, this was 170 deaths in 1917 in a population of 428 people. The situation was dramatized by the occurrence of the Spanish flu , which in its three waves also hit the Herborn institution. In their condition weakened by malnutrition, this flu hit the residents particularly hard, so that another 89 deaths were recorded in 1918, with a significantly reduced patient population of only 299 people.
During the war, special attention was also paid to the admission - even if only a few - of mentally damaged soldiers. Dealing with these people was in contradiction to many contemporary views. The soldiers in Herborn were not - as is often the case in worldwide psychology - treated as simulators , slackers or homosexuals , or even punished. The soldiers in Herborn were not stigmatized; the clinical picture was usually referred to as a war neurosis. The soldiers were treated with the aim of dismissing them as fit for war as quickly as possible. In Herborn, they limited themselves to keeping the soldiers affected away from anything that reminded of the war. They were placed between civilian patients to prevent the soldiers from talking to one another about memories of the war.
time of the nationalsocialism
The institution responsible for the institution, the “Wiesbaden District Association”, had been determined by party politics since the 1920s. After the National Socialists came to power, he played a key role in implementing the inhumane Nazi ideology in all institutions. The integration of the Herborn facility was correspondingly simple. In addition, in 1932 Paul Schiese had taken over the post of director from the retired Richard Snell.
Forced sterilizations
On January 1, 1934, the law for the prevention of hereditary offspring (GezVeN) of July 14, 1933 came into force. In the National Socialist German Reich it served the so-called racial hygiene.
In 1934, as in the Eichberg asylum, an operations department was set up under the direction of Wilhelm Stemmler after approval by the Ministry of the Interior. From December 1934 on, patients from the four state hospitals (Eichberg, Weilmünster, Hadamar and Herborn) and other institutions were subjected to forced sterilization in Herborn. The associated operations took place particularly frequently in Herborn. On the one hand, this is due to the geographical location of Herborn, since Herborn could be reached more cheaply from Hadamar and Weilmünster than the Eichberg institution. On the other hand, there were significantly more rooms available in Herborn for the follow-up treatment of the injured people. Forced sterilized women in particular had to stay in Herborn for a few weeks to heal wounds. In order to cope with the mass of forced sterilizations, additional ward staff were hired especially for the sterilization department in the course of 1934.
The department existed until August 1939. A total of 1188 people in Herborn were harmed by forced sterilization. Stemmler left the institution; he had been called up for the armed forces .
Intermediate establishment
At the end of 1939, various sanatoriums and nursing homes were converted into killing centers as part of the T-4 campaign . There, people referred to as "useless eaters" in Nazi jargon were exterminated en masse through gassing, among other things . The facility in Herborn was an intermediate facility of the Hadamar killing facility, as were the facilities in Andernach , Eichberg , Scheuert , Idstein ( Kalmenhof ) and Weilmünster . Killings were carried out in Hadamar from January 1941. The function of the intermediate facilities was the "interim storage" of the transports destined for Hadamar. This means that it should be ensured that only as many victims were brought in as could be murdered immediately afterwards.
The first victims of the murders were 38 Jewish patients. These were transferred to the Gießen institution on September 25, 1940 . At the time, Gießen served as a collecting facility for Northern Hesse. On the same day, Jews from nine other institutions arrived in Giessen. In total, there were 126 people who were brought to the Brandenburg killing center on October 1, 1940 and were probably murdered in the gas chamber there on the same day.
In June 1940, registration forms for selection were distributed in Herborn, with which the patients were recorded and which were sent back to the Reich Committee for the scientific recording of serious genetic and genetic diseases . It was there that life and death were decided. On the basis of these registration forms, a total of 652 regular patients were initially transported to Hadamar in nine transports between January 24, 1941 and March 24, 1941, where they were also murdered by gassing shortly after their arrival. The institution was thus "made free" to accept intermediate hospital patients.
The first transport of intermediate hospital patients reached Herborn on April 9, 1941 from the Lüneburg hospital. The relocations to Herborn always took place by train. In contrast, the relocations to Hadamar always took place with so-called Gekrat buses. Transports from Merxhausen, Marburg, Warstein and Aplerbeck followed. A total of 885 people arrived, 18 of whom died before being transported further and 858 were sent to their deaths in Hadamar. In this context, another 72 regular patients from Herborn were sent to their deaths in Hadamar.
On August 24, 1941, Hitler gave verbal instructions to end Operation T-4 and to cease “adult euthanasia” in the six killing centers. This instruction was based on public protests against the action. The " child euthanasia " was continued, however, as was the decentralized killing of disabled adults in individual sanatoriums and nursing homes.
hospital
On July 12, 1941, the institution was released from the task of accommodating, preserving and caring for the mentally ill. It was to be closed by July 31, 1941 and a children's home for 1,200 children was to be set up. On July 23, 1941, the institution had already been evacuated except for 270 sick people working on the farm and in the farms. At the end of July, a house with 75 children was occupied.
On August 12, 1941, the Wehrmacht , presumably in view of the war against the Soviet Union that had begun on June 22, 1941, requested the use of the facility as a hospital and used it on the same day. By March 1, 1942, the facility had 1200 beds. The first wounded arrived on August 31st. In October 1941 the hospital was already full. The 270 patients who remained in the institution were from now on also used to run the hospital. The operation of the manor with agriculture and livestock farming was also an essential part of this, in order to ensure catering. The fact is that the hospital would not have been able to operate without the work of the sick.
When the Allies moved into Herborn on March 23, 1945, the administration of the hospital passed to the Americans. In May 1946 the German civil administration took over the management of the hospital. Initially the district administrator, later the municipal association of the administrative district of Wiesbaden, was responsible. Paul Schiese took over the overall management until he retired on April 1st, 1947. From then on, the institution accepted psychiatric patients again.
post war period
In April 1945, Herborn was occupied by the Americans. At that time there were still around 2,600 wounded German soldiers and 300 psychiatric patients in the institutions. As the soldiers were dismissed, the buildings gradually became vacant again, so that the number of psychiatric patients rose again until the average occupancy of 1,100 patients in the 1950s. In addition to patients from other institutions, such as a children's transport from the Weilmünster institution in 1946 and traumatized soldiers of the Wehrmacht from a sanatorium near Oberursel, from October 1946 over 200 old and ailing refugees from the Sudetenland and neighboring refugee camps who were not otherwise cared for were accommodated could. The old people's home was closed in 1951 after these people could be distributed to other facilities.
Surgical and orthopedic clinic
The surgical and orthopedic clinic, which existed until 1976, emerged from the military hospital. This was continued as the main hospital with the invasion of the Americans. At the end of 1945, 1788 wounded were still being cared for in the hospital. When it was taken over by the German civil authorities on May 22, 1946, Schiese was again in charge of overall management, and the hospital was formally dissolved.
In fact it was continued as a surgical department. Most of the wounded left the institution. At the end of 1946 there were still 224 left, most of them long-term patients who had been admitted during the days of the war. This changed in the course of the following year. 199 new entrants were registered in 1947, 75% of them through admission by health insurers , while 280 patients were discharged or transferred. Overall, this reduced the occupancy to 127 patients by the end of March 1948, of which only 77 came from the former main hospital. From September 1949 on, the department had 120 beds.
On May 30, 1985, astronaut James Irwin gave a lecture at the clinic.
's Heinzje
Heinz Friese (born March 16, 1926 in Elbing (East Prussia), † June 30, 1998 in Herborn), better known as ' s Heinzje , came to the institution in Herborn in 1946 and developed into the original city . The short Frisian had been in various institutions since 1933 . He lived at the institution until the end of his life. He ran a lot of errands for Herborn business people and swept the street in front of the shops. He was so present in Herborn that the painter Ernst Grimm portrayed him in 1986 on the occasion of the Hessentag in Herborn. Since the end of 2017, his life-size bronze statue (together with the "Katzenmarie" and Ernst De La Motte) can be seen as the 2nd civic monument on Platz an der Linde in the Herborn pedestrian zone.
Vitos Clinic Rehberg
The history of the Rehberg Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic began in 1975. It was opened as an independent medical facility and took over the children's department of what was then the psychiatric hospital. At that time it had 144 beds and supplied six Hessian districts.
In the beginning, the clinic was only occupied with patients who were cognitively and physically disabled. Gradually this changed and children and adolescents were admitted with the disorders known today.
Today the Vitos Klinik Rehberg is a specialist clinic for child and adolescent psychiatry, psychosomatics and psychotherapy. It deals with all disorders of children and adolescents in all degrees of severity. The treatment takes place on an outpatient, partial or full inpatient basis.
The Vitos Clinic Rehberg has a compulsory care area for the Lahn-Dill-Kreis and Limburg-Weilburg districts and currently the western Main-Kinzig district (former Hanau and Gelnhausen districts with the city of Hanau) as well as the city and district of Offenbach, as it is located there Region has no child and adolescent psychiatry. By 2020, however, a new clinic is to be opened in Hanau to close the "white gap" in child and adolescent psychiatric care ; the costs amount to 25 million euros, of which the state of Hesse bears 20 percent and Vitos 80 percent.
Herborn Psychiatry Museum
A psychiatry museum has been set up in house 13 since 1991. In five rooms, visitors learn interesting facts about the history of the Herborn State Healing and Care Institution, founded in 1911, as well as about various psychiatric treatment methods. The exhibits come from the institution. The museum shows how society's dealings with mentally ill people have changed over the course of history.
Web links
literature
- Christina Vanja (Ed.): 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn. Review, insight, outlook. Jonas, Marburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-89445-460-9 ( Historical series of publications by the State Welfare Association of Hesse. Sources and studies. 16).
- State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Hesse (ed.): State sanatorium and nursing home In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hesse
Individual evidence
- ↑ Austraße 40a , in: Architectural monuments in Hessen Lahn-Dill-Kreis I , Monument Topography Federal Republic of Germany, Verlag Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1986, pp. 254–255.
- ↑ Bastian Adam: The state sanatorium and nursing home Herborn 1911–1918 , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn , p. 36.
- ↑ Bastian Adam: The state sanatorium and nursing home Herborn 1911–1918 , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn , p. 38.
- ↑ It was actually the fourth after Weilmünster (opened in 1897), Eichberg (opened in 1903) and Hadamar (under renovation in 1906/07).
- ↑ Bastian Adam: The state sanatorium and nursing home Herborn 1911–1918 , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn , p. 41.
- ↑ Heinz Wionski: monuments in Hesse Lahn-Dill I , p 254, Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1986.
- ↑ Julius Boethke: The modern hospital in the service of the 'Werkbaues' , in: Deutsche Bauzeitung 51 (1917), p. 347.
- ↑ Bastian Adam: The state sanatorium and nursing home Herborn 1911–1918 , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn. P. 46.
- ^ A b Bastian Adam: The state sanatorium and nursing home Herborn 1911–1918 , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn. Pp. 44, 52.
- ↑ Bastian Adam: The state sanatorium and nursing home Herborn 1911–1918 , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn. P. 53.
- ↑ Peter Sandner: The district association Nassau and its institution Herborn in the time of National Socialism , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn , p. 100.
- ↑ Peter Sandner: The district association Nassau and its institution Herborn in the time of National Socialism , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn , p. 100.
- ↑ Peter Sandner: The district association Nassau and its institution Herborn in the time of National Socialism , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn , p. 102.
- ↑ Andrea Berger, Thomas Oelschläger: “I let you die a natural death.” P. 303 In: Christian Schrapper, Dieter Sengling (Ed.): The idea of imageability - 100 years of socio-educational practice in the Kalmenhof educational institution. Juventa Verlag, Weinheim / Munich 1988.
- ↑ Georg Lilienthal: The Herborn State Hospital and the NS-Krankenmord , in: 100 Years of Psychiatry in Herborn , pp. 137-138.
- ↑ Georg Lilienthal: The Herborn State Hospital and the Nazi Murder , in: 100 Years of Psychiatry in Herborn , p. 138.
- ↑ Georg Lilienthal: The Herborn State Hospital and the NS-Krankenmord , in: 100 Years of Psychiatry in Herborn , pp. 138-140.
- ^ Mark Siegmund Drexler: The Herborn Special Hospital - War Mission of a Psychiatric Hospital , in: 100 Years of Psychiatry in Herborn , p. 157.
- ↑ Mark Siegmund Drexler: The Herborn Special Hospital - War Deployment of a Psychiatric Hospital , in: 100 Years of Psychiatry in Herborn , pp. 157-160.
- ↑ Kornelia Grundmann: We had no official knowledge of the events in Hadamar , in: 100 Jahre Psychiatrie in Herborn , p. 170.
- ^ The painter Ernst Grimm captured Heinzje in a portrait , in: Herborner Tageblatt of December 24, 1986.
- ↑ "'s Heinzje" is no longer alive , in: Herborner Tageblatt of June 3, 1998.
- ↑ Herbert Seitz-Stroh and Matthias Wildermuth: Notes on the history, present and future of the Vitos Clinic Rehberg , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn , p. 251.
- ^ Health: New psychiatry in Hanau for young patients - Frankfurter Rundschau
- ^ Gerhard Henke-Bockschatz: A visit to the Herborn Psychiatry Museum , in: 100 years of psychiatry in Herborn , p. 225.
- ↑ Eckart Roloff and Karin Henke-Wendt: 100 years of psychiatry through the ages. (Psychiatriemuseum, Herborn) In: Visit your doctor or pharmacist. A tour through Germany's museums for medicine and pharmacy. Volume 2, Southern Germany. Verlag S. Hirzel, Stuttgart 2015, pp. 196-198, ISBN 978-3-7776-2511-9