History of the Berlin Medical Historical Museum of the Charité

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History of the Berlin Medical Historical Museum of the Charité

Our Museum

History of the Museum

The Pathological Museum

Virchow's Specimens

The Specimens Today

Rudolf Virchow

Pathology

Ophthalmology

Ruine of Lecture Hall

The Berlin Medical Historical Museum (BMM) is famous for its pathological-anatomical collection. This inventory, extremely valuable from a cultural and medical historical viewpoint, consists of wet and dry specimens. The core of the collection originated in the work of the Berlin pathologist Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902). In 1856 Virchow took over the newly created professorship for pathology at the Berlin University on the grounds of the Charité. He expanded the existing collection of some 1,500 specimens to include 19,000 objects by 1890. It was his goal to document every known disease not simply with a typical specimen, but rather with a series of organ studies reflecting each disease's characteristic development.

The Ministry agreed in 1893 to Virchow's request for the establishment of a special museum especially for his collection. In addition, a decision was reached to build a completely new Pathological Institute to be housed in three separate building tracts. The first part of the building - the museum - was completed and opened in 1899. Two years later Virchow could celebrate his 80th birthday in the lecture hall of the museum. At this point, 20,833 specimens were on display, crowded closely in large glass showcases. The total exhibition space of 2,000 m2 was divided among three floors dedicated to teaching and research, as well as two others for exhibition, that Virchow consciously opened to the public. His enlightened idea was to increase the general public's knowledge of health and illness - in his eyes a significant part of human culture - with the help of these kinds of objects.

The Pathological Museum in Time of Opening

Rudolf Virchow counts today as one of the central figures in the conceptualization and application of modern scientifically-oriented medicine. Many personalities worked, taught, and studied at his institute who exerted great influence on the development of medicine in the 20th century. His entire collection of pathological-anatomical wet and dry specimens was open to all who worked in medicine. Virchow selected special objects to include in the public collection for those outside the medical professions.

Virchow's successors continued to maintain the collection, which attained a total of about 26,000 pieces just before World War II. Because of the damage from bombing in 1944/1945, the collection was severely reduced. According to an estimate after the war, only some 2,500 objects survived the inferno. A fire in the roof during the 1950s decimated the collection of older pieces once again. Since the late 1940s the collection has been rebuilt by specialists in pathology at the Charité.

The desire to make this collection accessible to the public again took on concrete form at the end of the 1970s. The first display cases were placed in the halls of the Institute for Pathology, in the connecting passageway between Pathology and the Museum building, as well as in several small, specially reconstructed rooms in the museum tract. A decisive extension of the idea for a museum came about after the Fall of the Wall in the early 1990s. Together with representatives from the Berlin Institutes for the History of Medicine (HU and FU), the idea was developed to return the entire museum building back to its original form in order to use it as a Berlin medical historical museum. The aim of illustrating the general development of medicine over the last four centuries, using Berlin as an example, was thus satisfied. As showcase for the Charité, the museum uses its permanent and temporary exhibitions to build bridges between the medical center's historical roots and its current medical research, teaching, and medical care.

In 1994, in order to encourage the use of the museum as public space, Christo and Jeanne-Claude were asked to present their project to clothe the Reichstag (Parliamentary Building) in the ruin of the former Virchow lecture hall in the museum. Since then the ruin has been consciously preserved in its current state and used for art exhibitions and evening presentations but also for longer seminars and theater productions. The first renovation phase was begun in 1997 with funds from sponsors, but most especially with a grant from the Lotto Foundation. On 25 March 1998 the museum opened the first level of the permanent exhibition.

The primary objects placed on view include approximately 1,000 wet and dry specimens, ordered according to the large regions of the body and organs. The entire inventory of the Virchow collection, however, has grown again to about 10,000 objects. The 100th anniversary of the museum could be celebrated with many guests on 27 June 1999 in the museum itself.

At the moment plans are being laid for the future development of the museum. In a second building phase in 2002, the museum received a further exhibition floor to be used primarily for special exhibitions. This area was opened on 29 August 2002 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the death of Rudolf Virchow with the exhibit, "Virchow's cells: Witnesses to the life of a dedicated and learned man in Berlin."

This presentation was made possible by joint work with the National Museums of Berlin - The Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage (esp. the Ethnological Museum, the Numismatic Collection, the Museum of European Cultures, the Museum for Pre- and Early History) and the Foundation of the City Museums of Berlin (Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin). In the future, visitors to this exhibition floor will find a changing variety of exciting insights into the history and current state of medicine. The goal will be to demonstrate the historical dimensions of medicine yesterday and today. In addition to general themes from the development of medical research and care, special topics will also receive attention and be related to the situation in Berlin.

At the same time "Virchow's cells" opened, the first portion of the permanent exhibition, the presentation of the Virchow collection of pathological specimens, was completely renewed and made accessible to the public. The specimens on display are grouped systematically and arranged didactically. They can thus "speak" as if from a three-dimensional textbook on diseases humans can contract in the course of their lives. Especially pupils in higher grades and trainees and students in medical professions, but also many interested laypeople use the newly-designed exhibition to inform themselves about medical topics.
In the meantime, the Berlin Medical Historical Museum has become one of the most exceptional institutions of its kind in the world. Numerous guests, both national and international, visit the museum. Its uniqueness makes it a particular attraction in the Berlin museum scene.

Prof. Dr. med. Thomas Schnalke, Director of Berlin Medical Historical Museum

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