Beelitz Tuberculosis Sanatorium: An Extraordinary Story Of Courage And Dedication

Built in 1898 as a treatment center for tuberculosis, the Beelitz Heilstätten hospital complex was the largest of its kind and a world leader in research and treatment. It included 60 buildings over 200 hectars of park-like grounds amidst a scenic forest located 1hr south of Berlin, Germany. Considered an exemplary model facility in the medical and social evolution during the early 20th century, the highly innovative sanatorium was amongst the most modern health care facilities in the world.

Notably, the hospital was specifically built with humanitarian values in mind to provide comfort, hope and dignity. The complex was deliberately created to convey beauty in order to encourage patients to seek treatment in an idyllic setting. The design of the facility also promoted patient integration and room placement in a non-isolated fashion so patients would not feel institutionalized.

Mario Basner's haunting photographs of a 19th-century tuberculosis sanatorium, now an abandoned ruin south of Berlin, are infused with his deeply personal response to the spirit of the place: "This is a place where people faced life and death, love and loss, hope and despair; it was a facility where people fought for their utter existence." The elegant beauty of the buildings reflected a compassionate respect for the dignity and worth of its patients. Their struggle for life was honored by the nobility of the architectual design.

To see that grandeur in decay moves us twice over, not only by memorializing the aspirations and ministrations of a vanished age, but also by imaging temporality so tenderly. The room in the photograph is full of human absence. The floor--littered, wet and muddy--indicates long neglect. Like the pool of water in the middle, the room seems cut off from life. The space is suffused with the pastness of things left behind.

And yet the room is not utterly dead or devoid of beauty. The light from outside is soft and comforting. The watery floor, like the moist and dripping interiors in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, is a richly ambivalent symbol. It can indicate stagnation and decay, as nature begins to erase the structures of human habitation. But it can also be a maternal sign of life-giving power, a source which sustains and nurtures. The triptych of windows resembles a church, with the central bay the chancel and the lone cot the altar. The pool of water, like a baptismal font, suggests purification and rebirth.

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Designed by architects Heino Schmieden and Julius Boethke, the Beelitz Heilstätten sanatorium accommodated 1,200 beds and focused on treatment methods which today would be considered "holistic": clean air, sun, sufficient time spent outdoors, inhalation therapy, healing baths and proper nutrition; all to strenghten the immune system.

The hospital was surrounded by forest in an area of exceptional air quality. Large ventilation systems were built to channel the clean forest air throughout the buildings. Inhalation rooms provided soothing treatments by evaporating essential oils into the air. Covered walking areas and outdoor facilities encouraged physical exercise while the property's own bakery, butcher shop and greenhouses provided the patients with fresh and nutritious food daily.