Since the article was not written by me, but the author's experience is very interesting to me, I will immediately make a reservation that there is no "Mine" tag, I leave the narration and writing style in the author's version, a link to the source is placed at the end of the post. I also take the photo with watermarks. The entire article does not fit in one post, so I attach photos in the comments. I hope you find this information interesting too. Happy reading.
Our hobbies sometimes lead us to amazing places. This summer I first found myself in the most interesting German city of Leipzig. And here, instead of wandering through local museums, admiring the world's largest monument to the Battle of the Nations, or swelling in the legendary Auerbach Cellar, where Goethe himself once composed his Faust with a glass of absinthe, I suddenly found myself in a huge abandoned psychiatric hospital.
To some, this may seem completely absurd, but the impressions of what he saw became one of the brightest and most unusual of my many travels around the world.
My further story will be full of mysticism, bad stories and strange visions, so I strongly recommend not reading it at night!
I don’t think that you have heard anything about an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Leipzig before, so first I’ll tell you a little about this very unusual local attraction. This place today is called the Park-Kranenhaus (Park-Kranenhaus) or Hospital Park. It is located on the outskirts of the city in the Dösen district.
In 1900, while still in the middle of fields and forests, a luxurious hospital was built here in the then fashionable pavilion style. At that time, in the rapidly gaining popularity of psychiatry, the ideas of humane treatment with a green environment dominated. Either hospitals, or sanatoriums were built on large areas in the form of huge parks with separate buildings, where each doctor could work with his patients individually, not particularly distracted by the outside world.
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Surprisingly, the Cranhausen in Dosen has practically not changed its appearance, layout and architectural features for more than a hundred years. He did not change his purpose either. Here they have always treated and continue to treat mentally ill people, and although most of the buildings have been abandoned by people for more than 20 years, the clinic of St. George is equipped on a separate part of it.
Nowadays, in this place, under close supervision, the so-called forensic psychiatry is located, or, simply speaking, a half-prison, half-hospital for criminals who have been declared insane.
Unfortunately, the luxurious, albeit neglected, landscape park with many interesting buildings from the beginning of the last century can hardly be called a paradise. Over the past hundred years, many terrible things have happened here. I'll tell you just a few.
One of the most famous patients in this hospital was the judge and writer Daniel Paul Schreber. Already in adulthood, he began to experience attacks of paranoid schizophrenia, which he described in detail as long as he could, in his diaries, later published as a separate book. His obsession became the thought that he was actually a woman. Soon the unfortunate was completely overcome by illness and he died in Dosen in 1911.
Surprisingly, what is now called transgender, then became the cause of a serious illness. Moreover, the methods of treating such mental disorders were not humane. The very same book of the poor judge has become a textbook for many psychiatrists in the world.
Later, the Institute of Psychology was located in Dosen, led by the talented doctor Hermann Paul Nitsche. The famous luminary of science was a passionate supporter of the then fashionable eugenics - the science of human selection.
Under his leadership, operations to sterilize critically ill patients began in Dosen. This category included psychopaths, downs, people with birth defects, such as blindness, deafness, and so on, and later drug addicts and alcoholics. The mortality rate after such surgery was high, especially among women.
But the German professor did not stop there and, under the order of the Nazis who came to power, led by Hitler, personally developed the drug barbiturate Luminal for the infamous T-4 killing program. With its help, under the idea of so-called racial hygiene, tens of thousands of patients were killed.
It is reliably known that in the Dosen hospital, under the leadership of Paul Nitsche, about eight hundred children died over the course of several years. At first, the device was used for seriously ill children under 3 years old, later the age range was greatly expanded. And how many lives of older patients were ruined in this place, no one has counted.
The aforementioned professor of psychiatry himself deservedly ended his life on the guillotine, while never pleading guilty at the trial. Until his death, he was firmly convinced that he served for the good of all mankind.
After the war, the hospital in Dosen became the model psychiatric hospital of the GDR. The main emphasis in treatment, as it should be for a socialist state, was placed on occupational therapy.
Although inhumane methods were also used for especially severe cases. Dissidents could also have entered. The practice was common at that time.
The old photographs published here show the everyday life of the patients of this hospital.
In 1997, the hospital was transferred to new buildings somewhere in a completely different area of Leipzig, and the green environment treatment method was recognized as completely outdated. Nowadays, here, in addition to the carefully guarded clinic of St. George, in several buildings there is something like a hospice for drug addicts and alcoholics. 70 percent of the complex is completely abandoned.
Many buildings have already begun to blend in with their surroundings.
Post-apocalyptic notes were added here and there by doors with strange inscriptions. The photo shows an example of such a passage with the mysterious inscription "I am not like you and will tell my shoble about this." What does it mean?
The difference is 70 years.