Sonnenstein castle
Encyclopedia
The Sonnenstein castle is a castle in Pirna
Pirna
Pirna is a town in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, capital of the administrative district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The town's population is over 40,000. Pirna is located near Dresden and is an important district town as well as a Große Kreisstadt...

, near Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It housed a mental hospital, which operated from 1811 to the end of World War II in 1945. During the War, it functioned as an extermination centre
Sonnenstein Nazi Death Institute
The Sonnenstein Euthanasia Clinic was a Nazi killing centre located in the former fortress of Sonnenstein Castle near Pirna in East Germany, where a hospital had been established in 1811....

 for the Third Reich Action T4
Action T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...

 program. It was shut down following the war, and reopened in 1970.

History

Sonnenstein castle, located at Pirna
Pirna
Pirna is a town in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, capital of the administrative district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The town's population is over 40,000. Pirna is located near Dresden and is an important district town as well as a Große Kreisstadt...

 near Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

, above the river Elbe, was built after 1460 on the site of a former medieval castle. Sonnenstein castle was used as a mental home since 1811. Among other patients Sonnenstein was the asylum in which Daniel Paul Schreber
Daniel Paul Schreber
Daniel Paul Schreber was a German judge who suffered from what was then diagnosed as dementia praecox. He described his second mental illness , making also a brief reference to the first illness in his book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness...

 wrote his Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken in 1900-2. Because of the advanced methods practiced there, it received worldwide acclaim and served as a model for other institutions. Sonnenstein Asulum was one of the first 'theraputic asylums' activity rooms included billards and music rooms.

World War II

See also: Sonnenstein Euthanasia Clinic.


From early 1940, until end of June 1942 a part of the castle was converted into a killing centre. A gas chamber and crematorium were installed in the cellar of the former men's sanitary (building C 16). A high brick-wall on two sides of the complex shielded it from outside while a high hoarding (billboard) was erected on the other sides. Four buildings were located inside the shielding. They were used for offices, living rooms for the personnel etc. Sleeping quarters for the "burners" (men who burned the bodies) were provided for in the attic of building C 16. It is possible that other sections of the buildings were also used by T4.

From end of June 1940 until September 1942 approximately 15,000 persons were killed in the scope of the programme and the Sonderbehandlung
Sonderbehandlung
Sonderbehandlung is a German noun meaning special treatment in English, also existing as a verb: sonderbehandeln . While it can refer to any sort of preferential treatment, it is known primarily as a euphemism used by Nazi functionaries and the SS for murder...

 14f13
Action 14f13
Action 14f13, also called "Sonderbehandlung 14f13", was a campaign of the Third Reich to murder Nazi concentration camp prisoners. Also called "invalid" or "prisoner euthanasia", the campaign culled the sick, elderly and those deemed no longer fit for work from the rest of the prisoners in a...

. The staff consisted of about 100 persons. One third of them were ordered to the extermination camps in occupied Poland, because of their experiences in deception, killing, gassing and burning innocent people.

During August / September 1942 the Sonnenstein killing centre was liquidated and incriminating installations such as gas chamber installations and crematorium ovens dismantled. From October 1942 the buildings were used as a military hospital.

Aftermath

In the summer of 1947 some Action T4
Action T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...

 members appeared as accused in the Dresdner Ärzteprozess (Doctor's Trial in Dresden). Professor Paul Nitsche
Paul Nitsche
Hermann Paul Nitsche was a German psychiatrist known for his expert endorsement of the Third Reich's euthanasia authorization and who later headed the T-4 Euthanasia Program....

, medical chief of T4, and two male nurses from Sonnenstein were sentenced to death.

It took about 40 years to recognise the part Sonnenstein played in the T4 program, and in 1989 the public commemorated the history of the centre. On 9 June 2000 a
memorial center for the T-4 Program was opened in the house. It is managed by the Stiftung Sächsische Gedenkstätten zur Erinnerung an die Opfer politischer Gewaltherrschaft (Foundation for Memorial Institutions in Saxony for the Victims of Tyranny).

Since 1970, the building has again housed disabled people. After the establishment of a rehabilitation center, a workshop for disabled people was opened in 1991.

Bilfinger Berger
Bilfinger Berger
Bilfinger Berger is a large, internationally active construction and services company based in Mannheim, Germany.-History:Bilfinger Berger dates back to 1880 when August Bernatz founded an engineering business which became known, from 1886 as Bernatz & Grün and, from 1892, as Grün & Bilfinger.In...

is working on the refurbishment of Sonnenstein Castle in a project due to be completed in 2012.

Literature

Stiftung Sächsische Gedenkstätten zur Erinnerung an die Opfer politischer Gewaltherrschaft (ed.), Pirna-Sonnenstein : Von einer Heilanstalt zu einem Ort nationalsozialistischer Tötungsverbrechen (2001). ISBN 3-934382-02-9

Links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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