The children's hospital in weißensee - just a ruin

The former children’s hospital in Weißensee is decaying. Unfortunately, this is nothing new.

In a few weeks, the city will start trying to get the site back – from those Russian investors to whom it was sold after it closed in 1996. They had promised to set up a cancer research center. Nothing is happening.

Like the city’s real estate fund towards the Donut Local news confirmed, the children’s hospital Weißensee at Hansastraße 178/180 becomes a court case at the end of October. The district court of Berlin should decide whether the city will get the huge area and the buildings (or ruins) on it back from "MWZ Bio Resonanz GmbH".

These are the Russian investors to whom the former hospital was sold after the closure. They had presented a concept according to which a scientific center for cancer research should bring the old buildings back to life by 2015 at the latest. Clinical operations as well as a therapy center and a conference center for doctors were planned.

Now, a few months before the turn of the year and around ten years after the Russian buyer promise, everything looks the same (or worse) than when it was sold. Say: The once stately hospital is a sad, dilapidated collection of ruins. Half-covered roofs, danger of collapse in almost all rooms, graffiti-smeared walls inside and outside and the remains of temporary "residents" (homeless like to use the building as a place to sleep).

Local residents rumored that it was not only the Russians’ fault that nothing had happened here. Supposedly there was strong headwind in the pharmaceutical lobby against the cancer center. Because of the alternative forms of therapy that one wanted to use here. But as I said, these are rumors that cannot be substantiated. Neither does the intrusive assumption that investors prefer the area without the old buildings more expensive to sell would like and therefore simply waits until everything is too broken for a renovation (with strict monument protection requirements). On the other hand, it can be demonstrated that the building jewel, which was regarded as a model hospital at the beginning of the 20th century, is again a case to show at the beginning of the 21st century. However, very different from 100 years ago, namely as a negative example of the politics of the city.

What was praised beyond Berlin’s borders in 1910 is now causing incredulous shakes of the head.

The hospital area planned by the architect Carl James Bühring was once one of the most modern infant hospitals in Europe. In addition to medical wards, they even had their own cowshed and dairy – to provide the children with fresh, healthy food. Also a small There was a heating plant, a carriage house and even an isolation pavilion. Everything is surrounded by a huge (1.5 hectare) park. Now there are only sad remains of the buildings. And what was a magnificent park back then is an overgrown collection of unsightly jungles.

All in all another (exemplary!?) – example of how the city of Berlin sells valuable, listed buildings from acute financial difficulties and with obviously badly secured contracts to windy investors. We can only hope that at least now somehow you can get the area back in court. Unfortunately, this has been tried for a long time, because the buyers have not fulfilled their supposed contractual obligations (receipt, new building of the cancer center).

It is precisely these omissions that will be brought to justice – and whether the city will get away with its withdrawal from the contract. This only seems possible if it doesn’t actually contain as many loopholes as insiders say. Because then the current owners are sitting on the longer lever. And you can comfortably wait until the buildings are so broken that you can only tear them down. Then the area is a gold mine. Keyword: expensive resale, profit maximization, probably (luxury? -) residential construction.

[map address = "Hansastraße 178, 13088 Berlin" infowindow = "Children’s Hospital Weißensee"]

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