The History of the Charité

The Genesis of the Charité

The Charité and Medical Education

The Charité since 1945

The Charité Today ...and Tomorrow

The Genesis of the Charité

In 1709 and 1710 a devastating plague raged through northeastern Europe. It reached East Prussia and Pomerania, posing a threat to the Royal Prussian residence in Berlin.

A special law, the "pest-ruling", was passed in 1709 which stated that at a time of increasing epidemic danger a "pest-house" should be built outside the town. It was in 1710, by which time the epidemic had already reached Prenzlau, that such a house was built near the "Spandauisches Thor" (the Spandau gate) entrance to Berlin. This served as a quarantine ward and a military hospital.

Berlin was spared the plague and the "pest-house" - a simple two-storey timber-framed building - was used as a hospital for poor, sick and elderly people, and also as a workhouse for healthy and able beggars.

In 1713 the Prussian capital gained a "Theatrum Anatomicum" (anatomical theatre), which belonged to the "Societät der Wissenschaften" (society of sciences). It was mainly used for the education of medical army officers but also for civilian doctors, midwives and other practitioners of the medical profession. In accordance with the custom of the time, "persons of distinction" were admitted to anatomical presentations in the theatre, where a professor of anatomy demonstrated the structure and location of the inner organs in human corpses.

The anatomy lectures were soon extended to other medical subjects, such as pathology, physiology, pharmacology and botany. With that, the anatomical theatre had developed over the course of time into an institution of medical education.

With the foundation of the "Collegium Medico-chirurgicum" in Berlin, in 1724, medical education obtained a defined structure. The Collegium offered excellent educational facilities for medical officers and military surgeons. What was still lacking was a facility for clinical education.

In the autumn of 1726, Frederick William I ordered the former pest-house to be converted into a military garrison hospital. In September of that same year, the city surgeon of Berlin, Christian Gottfried Habermaas made a proposal to open the planned military hospital for indigent civilians as well.

Since Eller, the private physician of the King, and the surgeon general Holtzendorf supported the proposal, the King approved the plan on November 18, 1726. The building was extended and the medical management taken over by a physician and a surgeon. A Chief Inspector was put in charge of the administration. Soon, a private house in the court yard of the former pest-house was built for him. Habermaas became the first Chief Inspector. Several other buildings, such as a kitchen, a refectory, a brew house and stables were built. The state provided respectable funding of 100,000 Talers. Together, the military and the civilian hospital were equipped with approximately 400 beds, 300 of which were occupied by the "Hospitaliten" - people in need of care.

On January 14, 1727, the King wrote a remark in the margin of an administrational petition from the Berlin city magazine requesting tax-free supply of rye for the patient's provisions: "The house shall be named Charité".

The Charité and Medical Education

The hospital, that was later to become the largest and most famous hospital in Berlin, has kept the name Charité up to this day.

According to the medicinal edict of 1725, which was to form the basis of the Prussian public health administration for almost a hundred years, all medical officers who wanted to settle in Berlin or other large cities had to pass an exam at the "Obermedicinalcollegium" (Chief Medical Commission) and in anatomy.

The interest in further education was considerable. For prospective military surgeons who were also to be allowed to treat internal diseases, an additional exam on the treatment of internal diseases was offered by the Collegium Medico-chirurgicum.

Medical doctors who graduated from universities did not receive a license to practice medicine until they had described in writing a real case-history and had passed an exam in anatomy and at least one other at the "Oberste Medicinalbehörde" (Chief Medical Board).

Frequently, non-Prussian military surgeons came to Berlin, using the facilities offered to add a theoretical foundation to their skills and to widen their practical knowledge. Foreign medical students and graduate doctors came to build on their theoretical knowledge through practice on patients.

Thus, the Berlin Charité became a model for a practice oriented medical education in Prussia and beyond.

By 1810, Berlin became a university town. The Collegium Medico-chirurgicum, the Charité and the army "Pepiniere" (founded in 1795) had provided an excellent base for the provision of medical education but had reached their limits as educational institutions by the end of the 18th century.

One of the results of wide ranging reform work by Stein and Hardenberg, in the face of the defeat of Prussia at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, was the foundation of the Berlin University.

Wilhelm von Humboldt, who worked from 1809 as head of the department of culture and education in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, was one the universities "spiritual founders". The physicians Hufeland and Johann Christian Reil also took part in the preparation of the new university's program. The university opened in October 1810, with more than 117 medical students enrolled - more than the other four Prussian universities combined.

With the founding of the university, Berlin provided an academic education to medical doctors. It was at first strictly separated from the Charité (which remained largely under the influence and use of the military), and courses were held in clinics for surgery, internal diseases and obstetrics, set up specially for the Medical Faculty. The first university clinics (12 beds for internal and surgical cases) were accommodated in various apartment houses.

The Medical Clinic was the first of the university clinics to be moved to the Charité in 1828. The division of education - at the Charité for the medical personnel of the army and at the university for civilian physicians - was gradually reduced during the second half of the 19th century. Today the Charité is central to the Medical Faculty.

The Charité since 1945

Immediately after the war, members of the Charité began the temporary restoration of the clinics and institute building and the work in the hospital. The university officially reopened on January 29, 1946.

1,550 beds were available by the end of 1945. Many of the red brick buildings only partially destroyed in the war were rebuilt in the 1950s in their original form. By 1960 the Children's clinic and the Oncology clinic were also rebuilt, and a new building for the Dermatology clinic was finished. The Medical Faculty consisted at the time of 17 Clinics and 16 Institutes, among them the newly founded Institutes for Experimental Endocrinology, Transfusion and Transplantation, which had emerged from the tissue bank of the Pathology Institute. Later, further Institutes were founded for Cardiovascular Diagnostics, the Clinics for Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, Urology and Nuclear Medicine. The educational spectrum was also extended.

In the 1970s, another fundamental reconstruction and "reordering" started. This was the result of a growing shortage of rooms and the wear and tear on the Charité's historical buildings. An earlier plan to leave the old locations and build an entirely new university clinic in the outskirts of the city was given up because of the immense costs involved. Work on reorganization and renewal started, taking all the historical buildings into consideration.

Between 1976 and 1982 a twenty-storey building was erected for the operational orientated departments, close to the old historical Charité location.

The new Charité-building, considering its medical technical equipment, was unique in the former GDR in which it found itself located post-war. It provided excellent conditions for patient care as well as teaching and research.

The political changes in 1989 and the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990 led to radical structural changes in the Charité as the university clinic of the Humboldt University in Berlin.

The Charité Today ...and Tomorrow

Today, the Charité is Europe's largest university clinic with four locations in Berlin: Campus Benjamin Franklin, Campus Berlin-Buch, Campus Charité Mitte, Campus Virchow-Klinikum.

Some 15,000 employees participate in delivering on the mission of "research, teaching, healing and helping", by attending to patients, undertaking research work and supporting the medical training of the next generation.

The Charité sees in excess of 120,000 in-patients per year and a further 900,000 on an out-patient basis, making it one of the single largest and most diverse patient resources within Europe. It is also one of Europe’s premier centers of research excellence with over 100 million euros in research funding received each year.

And still the Charité continues to develop. The fusion of the four campuses coincides with the rationalization of the Charité into 17 distinct centers and the "Charité 2010 Enterprise Concept".

To coincide with the 300th anniversary of the foundation of the Charité, a bold vision is set out for the Charité in 2010:

• To be one of the most prominent medical faculties for research and teaching in Europe.
• To be pacesetting in the application of modern medicine with a broad spectrum of genome based, individualized medicine approaches and partnership with individuals in respect of prevention and healthcare.
• To be a modern enterprise in the healthcare market place.