The Berlin Medical History Museum (BMM) of the Charité is known for
its pathological-anatomical collection. This is a collection of wet and
dry preparations that is significant in terms of cultural and medical
history. The director of the museum since 2000 has been Thomas Schnalke,
who also heads the professorship for the history of medicine and medical
museology at the Charité Medical Faculty of the Humboldt University in
Berlin. It is located on the Charité Mitte campus at Charitéplatz 1
(formerly: Schumannstraße 20/21) in the Mitte district of Berlin.
The Berlin Medical History Museum of the Charité is being expanded
and will remain closed from the beginning of February 2020 until spring
2023.
The origin of the museum goes back to the collection of preparations
of the pathologist Rudolf Virchow, who opened the Pathological Museum on
June 27, 1899. His 23,066 preparations, which showed almost all forms of
the disease known at the time, could be seen in large glass display
cases on five floors with an exhibition area of 2000 m².
Until
1914, the museum was open to interested laypeople. The First World War
and the economically difficult post-war period ended public access and
from then on the museum functioned only as a teaching and study
collection for medical instruction. However, Virchow's successors
continuously expanded the collection. At the beginning of the Second
World War, the museum had a total inventory of around 35,000 specimens.
The Second World War hit the building and the collection hard. Only
around 1,800 specimens survived the war and the building could no longer
be used as a museum for a long time.
It was only after German
reunification that considerations arose of setting up a museum again in
the same place. However, the decision was made not to establish a new
purely pathological museum, instead striving for a wide-ranging museum
of medical history. Finally, in 1998, the Berlin Medical History Museum
of the Charité was opened.
The outside of the museum (roof,
facades) was renovated and significantly expanded in 2006 and 2007 with
the help of cultural tourism funding from the State of Berlin from the
European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
In 2011, according to
media reports, the Charité board of directors considered the option of
closing and liquidating the museum due to austerity measures. In the
meantime, the continued existence of the museum as an institution of the
Charité has been secured for the time being.
The tour through the 800 m² new permanent exhibition begins in October 2007 with the restored Berlin Anatomical Theater of the 18th Century. Other departments are the Anatomical Museum, the dissecting room and the medical research laboratories. A highlight is the specimen collection, some of which goes back to Rudolf Virchow and contains 40 of the original 3,300 specimens by the anatomist Johann Gottlieb Walter (1734–1818). In a stylized hospital room, the development of medicine can be traced based on various clinical pictures, beginning in 1726 (a difficult birth) through the treatment of war injuries, the "iron lung" as a last resort for polio to today's intensive care medicine, for example with organ transplants. Other important facets of the new exhibition are the history of the Charité and medicine under National Socialism.