Sonnenstein Castle
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The Sonnenstein Castle is a castle in
Pirna Pirna (; , ) is a town in Saxony, Germany and capital of the administrative district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The town's population is over 37,000. Pirna is located near Dresden and is an important district town as well as a ''Große ...
, near
Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
. 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 for the
Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
''
Aktion T4 (German, ) was a campaign of Homicide#By state actors, mass murder by involuntary euthanasia which targeted Disability, people with disabilities and the mentally ill in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-WWII, war trials against d ...
'' program. It was shut down following the war, and reopened in 1970.


History

Sonnenstein castle, located at
Pirna Pirna (; , ) is a town in Saxony, Germany and capital of the administrative district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The town's population is over 37,000. Pirna is located near Dresden and is an important district town as well as a ''Große ...
near
Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...
, above the river
Elbe The Elbe ( ; ; or ''Elv''; Upper Sorbian, Upper and , ) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Ge ...
, was built after 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 (; 25 July 1842 – 14 April 1911) was a German judge who was famous for his personal account of his own experience with schizophrenia. Schreber experienced three distinct periods of acute mental illness. The first of these ...
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 Asylum was one of the first 'therapeutic asylums'; activity rooms included billiards and music rooms.


Nazi era

left, Self-portrait by Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, who was murdered at Sonnenstein Euthanasia Centre in 1940. From early 1940 until the 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 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 (, "special treatment") is any sort of preferential treatment. However, the word ''Sonderbehandlung'' was used as a euphemism for mass murder by Nazi functionaries and the SS, who commonly used the abbreviation ''S.B.'' in documentation. It f ...
'' 14f13. 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 disposing of prisoners. During August / September 1942 the Sonnenstein killing centre was liquidated and incriminating installations such as gas chambers and crematorium ovens dismantled. From October 1942 the buildings were used as a military hospital.


Aftermath

In the summer of 1947 some
Action T4 (German, ) was a campaign of Homicide#By state actors, mass murder by involuntary euthanasia which targeted Disability, people with disabilities and the mentally ill in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-WWII, war trials against d ...
members appeared as accused in the Dresdner Ärzteprozess ( Doctor's Trial in Dresden). Professor Paul Nitsche, 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 SE (previously named Bilfinger Berger AG) is a German multinational company specialized in civil and industrial construction, engineering and services based in Mannheim, Germany. History Bilfinger dates back to 1880 when August Be ...
worked on the refurbishment of Sonnenstein Castle in a project completed in 2011.German Construction Will See Contraction Ease in 2010
The small Saxon Psychiatric Museum in
Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
, established in 2000, is also giving attention to the history of Sonnenstein castle.


Literature

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


References


External links


Memorial


{{Coord, 50, 57, 39, N, 13, 56, 52, E, region:DE-SN_type:landmark, display=title Castles in Saxon Switzerland Pirna