Charité

History

Complying with an order of King Frederick I of Prussia from 14 November 1709, the hospital was established north of the Berlin city walls in 1710 in anticipation of an outbreak of the bubonic plague that had already depopulated East Prussia. After the plague spared the city, it came to be used as a charity hospital for the poor; so on 9 January 1727, King Frederick William I of Prussia gave it the French name "Charité".

The construction of an anatomical theatre in 1713 marks the beginning of the medical school, then supervised by the collegium medico-chirurgicum of the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

In the 19th century, after the University of Berlin (today Humboldt University) was founded in 1810, the dean of the medical college Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland integrated the Charité as a teaching hospital in 1828. During this time it became home to such notable medical pioneers as Rudolf Virchow, known as "the father of modern pathology" and whose name is given to the eponymous "Virchow's Method" of autopsy; the Swiss psychiatrist and neurologist Otto Binswanger, whose work in vascular dementia led to the discovery of Binswanger's Disease—so coined by his colleague Alois Alzheimer; Robert Koch, who identified the specific causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax; and Emil von Behring, widely known as a "saviour of children" for his 1894 discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin at a time when diphtheria was a major cause of child death (among many others).

During the Second World War, the Charité endured the Battle of Berlin and Berlin was taken by the Red Army on 2 May 1945. Though the majority of its original and pre-war structure was damaged or destroyed during the war, it was nevertheless used as a Red Army hospital. The Charité remained in the Soviet Sector of Berlin until the formation of the German Democratic Republic, the GDR (German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR) in 1949, more commonly called East Germany. Under the Communists, standards were largely maintained, and it became a showpiece for Eastern Bloc propaganda during the Cold War. Corpses of Berlin Wall victims were taken here for autopsies.

In 1990, with the reunification of Germany, and in the years following, Charité once again became one of the world's leading research and teaching hospitals.

Einstein Foundation

The Charité is one of the main partners of the Einstein Foundation, which was established by the city and state of Berlin in 2009. It is a "foundation that aims to promote science and research of top international caliber in Berlin and to establish the city as a centre of scientific excellence". Research fellows include:

Thomas Südhof – biochemist (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2013)

Brian Kobilka – chemist (Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2012)