Steinhof is a hospital in Vienna (Baumgartner Höhe, 1) whose complete name was originally Heil- und Pflegeanstalt "Am Steinhof" and which is now named Otto Wagner Hospital. It was designed by Austrian architect Otto Wagner and inaugurated in 1907. The building is made up of 60 pavilions and was originally a psychiatric hospital and a center for pulmonology1.
"In the years after the Anschluss of 1938", Steinhof turned "into the Viennese center of National Socialist medical murder that was to take the lives of far more than 7,500 Steinhof patients"2. In Pavilion 5 you can visit a permanent exhibition about this dark history: Der Krieg gegen die "Minderwertigen". Zur Geschichte der NS-Medizin in Wien (The War against the "Inferior". On the History of Nazi Medicine in Vienna). The exhibition labels are only in German but you can find a complete English version of the exhibition at this website.
In the entrance building you can find a first marble tablet with a memorial to the victims of Nazi euthanasia program and a second one with the list of the Directors of the Psychiatric hospital from 1907 to 1978: Heinrich Schlöss (1907-1919), Josef Berze (1919-1928), Alfred Mauczka (1928-1946), Leopold Pawlicki (1946-1950), Wilhelm Podhajsky (1950-1967) and Wilhelm Solms-Rödelheim (1968-1978).
Some of the Hospital Pavilions.
The famous Art Nouveau church of the Hospital by Otto Wagner and, in front of it, the monument to Leopold Steiner, political supporter and founder of the Institution.
The notorious Pavilions 15 and 17 "where approximately 800 sick or handicapped children and young people" and about 7000 adults were murdered between 1040 and 1945 according to the Nazi euthanasia program3.
- Photos by Luca Borghi ti.supmacinu|ihgrob.l#| (August 2016)
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