History of the Charité

History of the Charité

What is today a large, state-of-the-art medical clinic in the center of Berlin, was once a small “pest house” outside the city limits. The Charité was erected in 1710, originally devised to serve as a quarantine home for patients during a pest epidemic in Russia. This epidemic came to a halt in Prenzlau, just outside the city in front of the Spandauer Tor. The pest house was then converted into a lodge for the old, crippled and sick.

After 1726 the house served as a Military Hospital. One year later the King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm I, gave orders to train the medical personal as army doctors, and he named the hospital "Charité".

In 1810 the Berlin University was founded and the Charité soon became its school of medicine. The school's first dean was Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland. During the following decades, an internationally recognized scientific expansion took place based on the wise political decisions taken at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Universität. As a result of the creative atmosphere among world famous scientists working at the Charité, Berlin became one of the leading medical centers in the world in the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Physicians such as Johannes Müller, Johann Lucas Schönlein and Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach contributed to this great development in the medical field.

Many more doctors and medical students from all over the world came to Berlin to aquire new skills and scientific knowledge. Until 1933, other famous medical doctors - such as Virchow, Du Bois-Reymond, Helmholtz, Koch, Ehrlich, Behring, Rubner, Abderhalden, Warburg, Kossel, Chain, Griesinger, Grotjahn, Nicolai, Brugsch and Sauerbruch - contributed to the high reputation of the Berliner Schule. Nine Nobel price winners started their career at the Charité.

During the Nazi regime the Charité suffered from an enormous brain drain. Many of the well-known democratic and Jewish university teachers were forced to leave the country. After World War II, the Charité became the most important hospital in what was then the German Democratic Republic. It remained one of the most excellent medical schools in the Warsaw Pact region. A high standard of medical care and excellence in research was achieved.

After German reunification, the Virchow-Klinikum was transferred to the Humboldt-Universität and merged with the Charité. The Charité reflects the situation in the whole of Germany, i.e. bringing both eastern and western Germans together after more than 40 years of separation. Problems associated with the change from a communist to a capitalist system, including psychological, organizational and economic difficulties on both sides, proved to be and still are a challenging and fascinating experience.