BERLIN-WITTENAU

In 1925, the Wiesengrund Municipal Psychiatric Clinic for Children and Adolescents was established in Berlin-Wittenau in the former Dalldorf institutions. It was a branch of the Karl Bonhoeffer Psychiatric Clinic. From 1942 to 1945, a »children’s ward« of the same name was operated in Ward 3 at Wiesengrund. At least 175 children and adolescents were admitted there, and at least 81 of them were murdered.

Ernst Hefter was the medical director of the psychiatric clinic for children and adolescents. The »children’s ward« was headed by doctors Gertrud Reuter and Gerhard Kujath. Human experiments were conducted to test a tuberculosis vaccine, fever experiments and experiments with air in the brain. Georg Bessau, the doctor responsible for the vaccine trials, died of cancer in 1944. The experiments were continued without him.

Ernst Hefter was arrested in December 1945 and died in Bautzen prison. Gerhard Kujath became head of child psychiatry at the Free University of Berlin. Gertrud Reuter worked as a neurologist in Essen from 1946 to 1975. Berthold Ostertag, who removed children’s brains and conducted research on them, took over as head of a department at the University Hospital of Tübingen in 1945 and was later awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

There is now a memorial in the buildings at what is now Eichborndamm 238–240.