Center for Psychiatry Reichenau
The Center for Psychiatry Reichenau (ZfP) is a specialist hospital and psychiatric nursing home in the municipality of Reichenau in the district of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg . Furthermore, it is a training center, advanced training and further education as well as an academic teaching hospital of the University of Konstanz .
geography
In the local lexicon of Baden-Württemberg , the Center for Psychiatry is listed as a place to live with a population of 200 (as of 2010). The center is located opposite the island of Reichenau on the mainland.
history
The Center for Psychiatry Reichenau was opened on October 11, 1913 as the Grand-Ducal Badische Heil- und Pflegeanstalt near Konstanz . A facility for the treatment of up to 910 patients in combined psychotherapy and social psychiatry. The first director of the institution was Leopold Oster (1863–1917). His successor, Karl Wilmanns (1873-1945), was appointed head of the Psychiatric University Clinic in Heidelberg in 1918. From 1918 to 1924 Johannes Klewe-Nebenius was director of the institution.
From 1924 Maximilian Thumm (1883–1957) worked as the institution's director. Today he is considered an important reformer of psychiatric treatment; he introduced occupational therapy and thereby noticeably shortened the treatment period for a large number of patients.
time of the nationalsocialism
Maximilian Thumm was relieved of his office for political reasons at the beginning of the Nazi era in 1933 and the institute of eugenics was subordinated to the Nazi racial hygiene : Arthur Kuhn (1889-1953), who shortly after the National Socialist German Workers' Party took office ( NSDAP) had joined.
Forced sterilizations
Even before the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring came into force on January 1, 1934, he ordered in late autumn 1933 that only non-reproductive patients should be allowed out. From 1934 onwards, compulsory sterilizations were carried out. The medical officer responsible for the Constance district and thus for the Reichenau sanatorium and nursing home was the then head of the Constance health department, Ferdinand Rechberg. He was also an assessor in the Konstanz Hereditary Health Court , where the institution reported more than 1,500 former patients and their relatives. 1109 trials took place between 1934 and 1945: 610 men and 499 women were sentenced to forced sterilization, including 450 to 500 patients. This rate was higher than usual. Kuhn followed the Nazi views on forced sterilization.
In 1937, the Beauty Office awarded the institution the honorary title of " National Socialist Model Company ".
Action T4
Between May 7, 1940 and February 21, 1941, a total of 529 people were deported in eleven transports with the so-called gray buses of the Gemeinnützige Krankentransport GmbH within the framework of the so-called “euthanasia” program “ Aktion T4 ” , 508 of them to the killing centers Grafeneck and Hadamar murdered. The transports were carried out with different numbers of people. On June 17, 1940, 91 women were brought to Grafeneck, and on February 1, 1941, four women were brought to the smallest transport, the last of the Jewish patients wanted in a special operation in all institutions. The “ destruction of life unworthy of life ”, which included the mass murder of the Jewish people in World War II , began in 1940 in the gas chambers of Aktion T4. Kuhn had tried unsuccessfully to stop the transports of high-ranking personalities during the evacuation.
National political educational institute
After Action T4 was broken off in 1941, the institution was closed and the surviving patients were transferred to other institutions. The Baden Ministry of the Interior sold the large property to the Reich Ministry for Science, Education and Public Education . As early as April 2, 1941, the Reichenau National Political Education Institute (Napola, NPEA) was opened as a branch of the Rottweil NPEA in the former prison building . Max Hoffmann, who also headed Napola Rottweil, became the institution's director. All supply facilities such as the estate, large kitchen, laundry or gardening were used by the Napola. Sick rooms were turned into classrooms where needed. The students were initially used for renovation and clearing work. The first official school year began in autumn 1941. The training was never designed for more than 125 boys. The Napola Reichenau specialized in naval training. At his own request, Hoffmann left the Napola in October 1943 and was deployed as a war volunteer with a Waffen SS unit on the western front. Platoon leader Volz became the provisional manager in Reichenau, which from 1943 was no longer run as a Rottweiler branch, but as an independent Napola. Some of the buildings on the psychiatric area were empty until they were used by three girls' schools. Only in the last weeks of the Second World War , as in other places in public buildings, were hospitals established. The history of Napola Reichenau ended on April 26, 1945 when the French took over, occupied and dissolved without a fight.
post war period
A French military hospital was set up in the eastern part, which also treated liberated French concentration camp prisoners, and a convalescent home for French women and children in the western part.
It was not until December 1, 1949 that the facility was officially reopened as the Reichenau State Psychiatric Hospital (PLK). Kuhn, classified by the French security service as denazified and "opponent of euthanasia", took over the management of the clinic. Under him, Ferdinand Rechberg took up a position there in 1950. After Kuhn's death in 1953, Rechberg took over his position despite technical and political concerns. During this time Rechberg was often active as an expert on reparation issues. Since he was still convinced of the correctness of carrying out compulsory sterilization after the war, he often refused compensation.
On January 1, 1996, the Reichenau State Psychiatric Hospital was converted into an institution with legal capacity under public law with the current name. The center has been an academic teaching hospital at the University of Konstanz since 2000 .
The Center for Psychiatry Reichenau appears today as a spacious facility with 17 mostly one and a half or two and a half storey buildings in park-like grounds criss-crossed by streets.
2012 was in Waldshut adjacent to the hospital Waldshut opened a new psychiatric treatment center.
Commemoration
A memorial in front of house 20 on the clinic grounds reminds of the evacuation and murders of patients at the sanatorium of the time. The inscription reads:
"508 PATIENTS OF THE REICHENAU HOSPITALITY WERE MURDERED IN 1940/41 IN THE PERIOD OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM - THIS EXPRESSES US TO RESPECT AND PROTECT THE LIFE OF EVERYONE"
At the main cemetery in Konstanz there is another memorial for the euthanasia victims with 3 steles and a horseshoe-shaped floor plate.
From October 16, 2014 to May 20, 2015, the mobile memorial of the gray buses stood at House 1 (administration building) in the Center for Psychiatry. Then the vacated area of the removed memorial is to be paved - as a further reminder. The artists Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz , who created the memorial, call it “emptiness” - based on the Voids , empty rooms in the Jewish Museum Berlin .
The Historical Museum of the Center for Psychiatry Reichenau has been showing the permanent exhibition "Psychiatry in the First World War" since June 2015.
Facility
The center consists of four specialist clinics, a forensic clinic, psychiatric outpatient departments and a residential and nursing home as well as a reintegration home.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Local lexicon Baden-Württemberg: Center for Psychiatry
- ↑ Ernst Klee : The everyday mass murder. The "euthanasia" campaign was the test run for the murder of Jews - the circle of victims was expanded more and more until the end of the war . In: Die Zeit (1990), Issue 13 of March 23, 1993
- ↑ Ernst Klee: The urn filled with other ashes. What happened 40 years ago in the euthanasia research department in Heidelberg . In: DIE ZEIT (1983), Issue 35 of August 26, 1983
- ↑ www.medizinfo.de (PDF; 370 kB)
- ↑ Hans-Jürgen Seelos, Klaus Hoffmann (Ed.): 100 years of opening of today's Center for Psychiatry Reichenau. Psychiatrie-Verlag, Cologne 2013, ISBN 3-88414-536-3 (prison system, addicts, dementia, National Socialist era). Discussed with Beate Schierle: When the region's psychiatry lost its innocence. In: Südkurier of August 16, 2013.
- ↑ Website ZPF ( Memento from February 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Eckart Roloff and Karin Henke-Wendt: Psychiatry in the confusion of the First World War. (Historical Museum of the Center for Psychiatry Reichenau) 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, ISBN 978-3-7776-2511-9 , p. 69 f.
literature
- Heinz Faulstich : From care for the insane to “euthanasia”. History of psychiatry in Baden until 1945. Lambertus, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993, ISBN 3-7841-0664-1 .
- Arnulf Moser: The NAPOLA Reichenau. From the sanatorium and nursing home to National Socialist elite education (1941–1945) (= series of publications by the Working Group for Regional History Bodensee. Vol. 12). Stadler, Konstanz 1997, ISBN 3-79770-380-5 .
- Hans-Jürgen Seelos , Klaus Hoffmann (Eds.): 100 years of opening of today's Reichenau Center for Psychiatry. Psychiatrie-Verlag, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-88414-536-4 .
Web links
Coordinates: 47 ° 42 ' N , 9 ° 7' E