Sonnenstein Asylum

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Sonnenstein Asylum
Established 1811
Current Status Active
Building Style Single Building
Location Pirna, Germany
Alternate Names
  • Sonnenstein Institute
  • Pirna District Rehabilitation Centre



History[edit]

Sonnenstein asylum opened in 1811 in a disused fortress on a hill in the city of Pirna. It admitted all those patients from the old asylum at Waldheim that were considered curable leaving incurables at Waldheim. Due to the work of its first superintendent, E.G. Pienitz, Sonnenstein soon became a model for the reform of psychiatry in German-speaking countries. In 1856 the institution was extended by the construction of new pavilions, built to specifications that reflected contemporary psychiatric thought. Because of the advanced methods practiced there, it received worldwide acclaim and served as a model for other institutions. Sonnenstein Asylum was one of the first 'therapeutic asylums' activity rooms included billiards and music rooms.

In late 1939, the hospital was closed to public patients. Beginning in early 1940 the Nazis began operating "Aktion T4", Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination". Sonnenstein was 1 of 6 death institutes set up in 1940 and 1941 across the German Reich under the direction of the branches of the Nazi Party, overseen by a specially-created control center for the extermination program, established at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin.

Part of the institution was converted for euthanasia. They installed a gas chamber and crematorium in the basement of the former men's house C16. A high brick wall and a wooden fence prevented insights from all sides. Within this complex were four buildings. They were used as offices, housing for staff, etc. In the attic of the house of C16 were the bedrooms of the "burner" (men who were to burn the bodies). From the end of June 1940 to September 1942 approximately 15,000 disabled people were killed in the course of T4 at Sonnenstein. The staff consisted of about 100 people. In August / September 1942 , the Sonnenstein Institute dissolved and removed suspicious installations in the gas chambers and the ovens. At that time it was converted into a military hospital.

After the war a large part of the site was used by a continuous-flow machine manufacturer to build aircraft turbines. In 1977 the Pirna District Rehabilitation Center was established in the castle area. In 1991 this grew into the workshop for handicapped people under the sponsorship of the workers' charity, Arbeiterwohlfahrt. Not until autumn 1989 did its historic events gradually sink in to the public consciousness in the town. On 1 September 1989 on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Nazi extermination program, a small exhibition by the historian, Götz Aly, about Action T4 was held in the Evangelical Community Centre of Pirna-Sonnenstein at the initiative of several townsfolk interested in bringing the subject to light. The exhibition generated a lot of public interest. As a result, there was a citizens' initiative to create a suitable memorial site to the victims of the Nazi euthanasia crimes at Sonnenstein.

Images[edit]

<gallery> File:Sonnenstein1944.jpg File:Sonnenchamber.jpg File:Sonnenstein2001.jpg