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Vienna’s Otto-Wagner-Spital: A Disturbing Story

July 21, 2020 By Guy St. Clair

Before I conclude my own personal homage to Vienna’s most famous architect (coming in a few weeks when I write about Otto Wagner’s stunning Österreichische Postsparkasse) I want to look again at the Otto-Wagner-Spital which we visited a few days back.

Otto-Wagner-Spital

In the previous post, I made reference to the fact that the Otto Wagner Hospital in Vienna will be re-named on August 1, becoming Vienna’s Klinik Penzik. I also mentioned that the overall site – beautifully landscaped – would continue to function (as now) as a public park. At the same time, part of the site will become the new location of the Central European University (CEU) as it moves from Budapest to Vienna, with classes beginning in 2022/23.

Along with the university, health care continues to be a strong focus as well, and even as far back as 2000 five health facilities were consolidated under the label Sozialmedizinisches Zentrum Baumgartner Höhe – Otto Wagner Spital mit Pflegezentrum (Baumgartner Höhe Social Medicine Center – Otto Wagner Hospital and Care Center). The five facilities are:

  • Förderpflegeheim Baumgartner Höhe (nursing home)
  • Neurologisches Krankenhaus Maria-Theresien-Schlössl (neurology)
  • Pflegeheim Sanatoriumstraße (nursing care)
  • Psychiatrisches Krankenhaus Baumgartner Höhe (psychiatry)
  • Pulmologisches Zentrum Baumgartner Höhe (pulmonology).
Leopold Steiner Monument

As for the hospital itself (often referred to as the Psychiatrisches Krankenhaus), it was a large mental hospital opened in 1907 after three years of construction. When it was built, the hospital was one of the most modern and largest psychiatric clinics in Europe, and its planning and construction, with Leopold Steiner the site manager (later honored with his statue directly below the church at the base of the hill, a recognition which in all probability could not have been topped!). The overall planning and site plan were under the direction of the Lower Austrian state government, supervised by Carlo von Boog. There are different stories about Otto Wagner’s participation, and I was told by more than one person that he did not work on the entire hospital site, although of course the church – in my opinion his great masterpiece – dominated his many projects during the time of his work at the site. Walter Zednicek in Weiner Architektur um 1900 writes “The Steinhof church in the middle of a newly constructed psychiatric hospital is a landmark in ecclesiastical architecture, not only for the time in which it was built. With this central building, Wagner experimented with aspects such as the development of a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), involving numerous visual artists. … It is noteworthy that Wagner always worked on several projects at once, overseeing their implementation.” This seems to explain Wagner’s sometimes designation as the site’s “overall” architect although, as I say, there are others who point out only the church and specific items, such as lampposts and other practical Art Nouveau ironwork.

But the beauty of the place is not today’s story. There is another story, and it is equally important. Of course when we visit a place like Steinhof it’s necessary to enjoy and even to study its stunning architecture. At the same time, especially in this case and in the difficult times in which we are now living, it is critical also to concentrate on what can happen when evil takes control in a society and seems to become a defining characteristic for how that society functions. That’s what happened at the site we’re enjoying now, and I find myself giving attention to what I think of as the dark side of am Steinhof, as the hospital was colloquially referred to before World War II.

A view of the memorial to the victims, with the steps to the Art Nouveau Theater, with Otto Wagner Lampposts

The visitor gets a first cue in the walk up to the church and later, after leaving the church and upon leaving the Art Nouveau Theater, observing the area in front of it. We are looking at the Gedenkstätte zur Geschichte der NS-Medizin in Wien (Memorial to the History of Nazi-Medicine in Vienna), which serves as both a memorial and, within Pavilion Five, as an exhibition describing what happened in the hospital. One authority describes the memorial – a beautifully laid-out garden space honoring the victims – as “a striking memorial for the victims of the Spiegelgrund murders, made up of rows of subtly illuminated lights in a field in front of the complex’s theatre building.” Despite the lack of pretension, both the memorial and the exhibition commemorate and chronicle this dark legacy of the Nazi medical programs. This can be seen in an occasional reference to both as the “Memorial Steinhof,” with the emphasis – as can be seen in the photographs in the album accompanying this post – on Nazi euthanasia and medical crimes at Steinhof.

I had the experience of learning more about what had happened at am Steinhof, in addition to admiring the beautiful grounds and its architecture. I did so when I was invited to enter Pavilion Five and visit the onsite exhibition dedicated to the Nazi past and the horrors that were inflicted on children and young people. I had never heard about this particular activity taking place under the Nazis, although I had read enough books about the war and what was happening in Germany that I think I must have had an idea. I was not prepared, though, for what I learned. When I arrived in Pavilion Five and went up to the exhibition on the first floor. I was surprised to see what appeared to be a class of university-age students, perhaps even graduate students, gathered around two lecturers who were giving a detailed history of the events described in the exhibition. The specific exhibition is called Kindereuthanasie in Wien 1940-1945, and it isn’t exceptionally large, but it is gripping (there’s no other way to describe it). Primarily, it seems to be a specialist type of exhibition, with many large poster-like graphic representations (most of which – as can be seen in the photographs in the accompanying album – only use German). And the exhibition obviously does not attract the general tourist; indeed, I was the only person viewing the exhibition aside from the students and their lecturers, and they were all obviously engrossed in what they were discussing (as for me, I could understand but little of what was being said, but no one seemed to mind that I was listening).

The subject of the exhibition is the Kinderfachabteilung in Vienna, the Städtische Jugendfürsorgeanstalt “Am Spiegelgrund” Wien. It operated from late July 1940 until May 1945, and it has been described in several enlightening studies. For our purposes (at least for me) most of these must be accessed via Google Translate, but reading them is worth the effort. And we can’t get away from the fact that, even in translation (which in this case seems to be very well done), the story told here is almost overwhelming in the overall sadness and terrifying emotions it evokes. We can’t help but ask how such dastardly events could have taken place. And even with what we know now about the horrors of World War II and after reading so many studies and so much historical fiction on the subject, the very idea of the Kindereuthenasia is a frightening and horrifying page from the past to learn about.

For most of us, if we are not scholars or historians specializing in the Nazi regime, the Wikipedia entry is a valuable resource. Under the general title of Am Spiegelgrund Clinic, this excerpt can give us a good idea of what to expect when we visit the exhibition:

Beginning in the spring of 1938, an extensive network of facilities was established for the documentation, observation, evaluation, and selection of children and adolescents, whose social behavior, disabilities, and/or parentage did not comply with the Nazi ideology. The recording of these individuals often began in infancy. Doctors and midwives across the Reich reported mental and physical abnormalities in newborns and children to health authorities. In 1941 in Vienna, 72 percent of newborns were documented within their first year of life by the city’s more than 100 maternity clinics. Included within the records was genetic information. Indeed, anyone who came into contact with a health institution was systematically recorded into a “hereditary database.” All told, over 700,000 Viennese citizens were entered into this database. Genetic information was compounded with school assessments and with employer information and criminal records, when applicable.

Many within Vienna’s healthcare system adhered to Nazi ideas of eugenics, and patients of all ages were funneled into specialized facilities, in which many patients were mistreated and killed. Among the patients were those deemed “life unworthy of life.”  Throughout Germany and Austria, euthanasia centers were established for people suffering from mental or physical handicaps. Children were not spared. Many children were “mercifully” sent to Children’s Hospitals, and among the most prominent of these was the Kinderspital (Children’s Clinic) am Spiegelgrund in Vienna.

From what I’ve been able to learn, Psychiatrisches Krankenhaus, Vienna’s principal psychiatric hospital became the main site of the Nazi euthanasia program and enforced sterilization of the mentally ill or other “undesirables” in terms of the crude Nazi race and eugenics ideology. The Spiegelgrund part gained particular notoriety as the center for the euthanasia of Austrian children, and it is thought that during the war, 789 Austrian children were tortured and murdered in the Children’s Ward of the hospital.

Additionally, the so-called “treatment” of the victims, including not only children, ranged from just being shut away and mistreated to enforced sterilizations and downright murder, with many of the victims being doubly endangered because they were Jewish, giving the Steinhof/Spiegelgrund center a role in the Holocaust as well. One authority has identified the “peak” of this policy under the pretext of medicine, the so-called “Aktion T4” euthanasia program of 1940/41, when tens of thousands of “patients” were sent to the six euthanasia centers for systematic murder (mainly in gas chambers). The most notorious of these centers, Schloss Hartheim near Linz, was the final destination of over 3000 of the victims – adults and children – from Steinhof/Vienna.

Vienna's Central Cemetery- Final Resting Place for the Victims of Spiegelgrund
Vienna’s Central Cemetery- Final Resting Place for the Victims of Spiegelgrund
Photo: Haeferl

As for the children, in 2002 the remains of these victims were given a special memorial and final resting place at Vienna’s Central Cemetery (Zentralfriedhof), as shown here. The upper stone block reads in German “NEVER FORGOTTEN” and the lower stone block reads in German “IN MEMORY OF THE CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS, WHO FELL VICTIM TO NS EUTHANASIA AS “LIFE UNWORTHY OF LIFE” FROM 1940 TO 1945 IN THE FORMER CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL “AM SPIEGELGRUND.” DEDICATED BY THE TOWN OF VIENNA IN 2002.”

So the story of Steinhof – despite being the location of the most beautiful Art Nouveau church in the world – has an agonizing aspect as well. It won’t be forgotten. Coming to terms with the dark history of Spiegelgrund/Steinhof took a long time to get going, and one study asserts that some of the specimens collected from victims during the euthanasia program remained in “use” for research up until the 1980s. That seems impossible now, but I would need to have more information before I could either confirm or refute that assertion. In any case, with the exhibition, the memorial, and the education programs now being put forward, good things are happening with respect to the past. It has all come together – as one author said – as one of the signs that even in Austria things have changed and the Nazi past is being confronted more openly (though by not as much as is needed) than in previous decades.

Click here to see more photos relating to this post: Vienna-Otto-Wagner-Spital-Part-2

Filed Under: History, Travel Tagged With: art nouveau, Central European University, Kindereuthanasie in Wien 1940-1945, Otto-Wagner-Spital, Steiner (Leopold), Vienna, Vienna - Am Spiegelgrund, Vienna - Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance, Vienna - Klinik Penzik, Vienna - Memorial Steinhof, Vienna - Memorial to the History of Nazi-Medicine in Vienna, Vienna - Psychiatrisches Krankenhaus, Vienna - Zentralfriedhof, von Boog (Carlo), Wagner (Otto), Zednicek (Walter)

Guy St. Clair is a writer and editor living in New York City. In his blog, Sharing Guy’s Journey, Guy writes about any subject that crosses his mind (some friends refer to the blog as “Guy’s online journal”).  In his professional life, Guy is the Series Editor for Knowledge Services, from De Gruyter Saur in Munich and Berlin. 

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