The Holy Ghost Chapel of the General Municipal Hospital in Düsseldorf can be found along the central lawn of the hospital. It was meant for both Christian confessions from the beginning, rather seldom at that time, which underlined its over-confessional character. Before the foundation of the municipal hospital, the city relied on confessional hospitals and sponsored building activities whereas Roman Catholic or Protestant sisters were employed as nursing staff by confessional institutions. Another chapel in similar style designed by the municipal architect Johannes Radtke is also in operation on the nearby graveyard (Stoffeler Friedhof).
From the chapel one has a magnificient view of the sun terraces of the former surgical clinics which resemble rather a noble sanatorium.
Opposite to the chapel was originally a bathhouse with facilities for regenerative gymnastics, representing body and soul as core of the old hospital campus. This facility was modernized by introducing therapeutic x-ray instead of Zander apparatus in 1923, operated by the Dermatological Clinics, the large old building to the West. Its two main aisles were meant to separate male and female patients prone to STD. Under Hans Theodor Schreus this clinic gained some research reputation for x-rays and sulfonamide in the 1920s-40s.
During WWII, an air raid destroyed the bathhouse completely, so that the northern lawn is characterised by the bunker entry, used after the war as research institute for the development of electronic microscopes (Ernst und Helmut Ruska, Bodo von Borries) and as acoustic laboratory, successively.
- Pictures: U. Koppitz, T. Halling; text: Thorsten Halling & Ulrich Koppitz
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Bibliography
- Thorsten Halling & Jörg Vögele, 100 Jahre Hochschulmedizin in Düsseldorf 1907-2007, dup Düsseldorf 2007