Königin-Elisabeth Hospital

Königin-Elisabeth Hospital
Written By: Karla Cortes
Edited By: Grave Reviews Staff

Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital : An Abandoned General Hospital in Berlin

After many moves from location to location, the Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital that was visited and seen in the video resides in Oberschöneweide. Not to be confused with the official Evangelisches Königin Krakenhaus Elisabeth in Lichtenberg. From 1910 to 1994, Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital was a hospital used for all sorts of illness and disabilities. Not much information can be found on exactly what happened during its time of use, but it can be implied from the remains that it wasn’t all peaceful and pure. Especially when it is known that the Nazis had taken over the building, and when crematoriums still line the basement walls.

History of Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital

The Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital was named after Queen Elisabeth of Prussia who is originally born in Bavaria but married her way out. On April 14th, 1843, Queen Elisabeth established the Small-Sick-Children-Preservation-Institution hospital for minor needs cases on account of her husband, Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The building was established in Mitte, which is today’s center district of Berlin. The institution then moved to a private house in Kreuzberg and was renamed Elisabeth Children’s Hospital in 1844. Here, the foundation of the deaconess mother house resided here and was also the site where consecration of the first nine deaconess occurred.

Due to over crowdedness and some other legal implications, the hospital moved yet again to another facility at Oberschöneweide in 1910. A new department for internal medicine and surgery for adults cultivated and renamed the hospital Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital or, Queen-Elisabeth-Hospital to include all types of patients instead of just children. The children’s department was reduced even more due to a severe scarlet fever epidemic that broke out in 1913.

World War I

After World War I broke out, between the years of 1914-1918, many doctors and deaconesses were sent out to retrieve the wounded from the front lines. As more and more patients filled the hospitals, a reserve hospital as well as the giant garage-like building was set up to house 150 more beds. After the war, depression and hyperinflation as well as poverty and rising political tensions took over. Then in 1924, things started to get better for the hospital until the Nazis took over.

Nazis & Russia

Leading up to World War II, the Nazis took over and dismissed many doctors for being “Non-Aryan”. The hospital was used to treat Nazi military and to conduct research. Soviet Russia then took over by September of 1945 and Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital was split between being used as a military hospital and a regular hospital. By November of 1945, the hospital only catered to Russian soldiers and the rest were transported to nearby hospitals.

Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital was then forced to relocate to another hospital in Lichtenberg, which was later renamed the Evangelisches Diakoniewerk Königin Elisabeth (EDKE) in 1980. The Russians kept using the Oberschöneweide hospital even after the deaconesses relocated even after the fall of the Mauerwall (Berlin Wall) in 1989 up until 1994.

Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital Today

Evangelisches Diakoniewerk Königin Elisabeth bought the site back once the Soviets had left. The new Evangelisches Königin Elisabeth hospital today is now situated in Herzberge which also gives information on the Oberschöneweide facility we are discussing. The initial plans of the abandoned hospital were to develop nursing homes, supermarkets, and apartment complexes, but then it was decided to sell the plot separately. This resulted in some buildings being torn down and a few new buildings being built around the hospital. Now, the Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital is left to decay as the world builds around it. There is little information to be found about the abandoned hospital, and many of the horrors that may have happened are unspoken. What looks like crematoriums line the basement of this forgotten treasure, so what spirits lay restless amongst the decay?

A Grave Encounter

My friend and I visited Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital on October 23rd 2019 and it is safe to say that the abandoned hospital is one of the most beautifully decrepit buildings we have yet to visit. Upon arriving, we heard rustling on the second floor and became immediately alarmed. We decided to go up and venture who it was, only to discover a graffiti artist making his mark. We exchanged greetings, and carried on with our journey. The place was crumbling and most of the windows appeared to be broken or shattered. Graffiti covered almost every corner of the one white walls of the building. As shown in the video attached to the article, the architecture of the building made it seem like a funhouse. Arched doorways and hallways crisscrossed into each other leaving small rooms between each column. The top floor of the building was completely open with just the skeleton of the roof left behind. Plants, grass, and moss overgrown on top of the floors and what was left of the walls. Sunlight poured in and gusts of wind constantly made the wooden skeleton and hanging windows creek. The building consists of three floors, and what seemed to be two basements.

There was a huge difference between all the other levels compared to the basement. One was a half basement, located between the first floor and the basement. The stairs leading to the basement was barricaded by a bureau, which seemed to have been put there on purpose. There’s no telling what was down there and why the person who blockaded it decided to do so. So we decided to not disturb what’s down there and just go in to the halfway basement. The minute we stepped into the doorway, a sense of dread and fear crept up on us. The atmosphere completely changed, and we could suddenly see our breath. As we ventured through the first pitch black basement, we quickly realized that the small rusted doors to our right were multiple crematoriums lining the walls. This immediately made us realize that something was wrong. We started to look around and saw what looked like a series of rooms with singular tubs built into them. I decided to stop recording out of respect to whatever may have been down there. Once I did, we heard rustling coming from the deep end of the hallway. We immediately went into one of the rooms with the bath and waited. We heard footsteps creeping towards us not from the way we came in, but from the deep pitch black end and decided it was time to escape. We crawled out from one of the broken windows up into the light and did not turn back to see what was there.

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