WUNSTORF

The Provincial Mental Hospital and Nursing Home in Wunstorf (founded in 1930) was preceded by various institutions: a military hospital (from 1757), barracks (from 1787), a penitentiary (from 1880), and a »state poorhouse« (from 1908). The latter took in day laborers, homeless people, addicts, and unmarried single parents. After World War I, mentally ill people and people with disabilities were added. By 1927, there were already 600 patients in Wunstorf, who were cared for by two doctors and around 100 nurses.
During the Nazi era, the Wunstorf sanatorium and nursing home was given the special task of serving as a collection point for Jewish patients from other institutions. From 1938 onwards, Jewish and non-Jewish patients were separated for anti-Semitic reasons. In September 1940, Wunstorf became a »collection point« for Jewish patients from the province of Hanover, North Rhine-Westphalia, Bremen, and Oldenburg. On September 27, 1940, 158 Jewish patients from 25 institutions were transferred from Wunstorf to the Brandenburg killing center and murdered.

Six months later, in the spring of 1941, 212 patients from Wunstorf were transferred via the Idstein, Scheuern, and Eichberg transit institutions to the Hadamar killing center and murdered. On September 1, 1941, the Wunstorf mental hospital ceased operations, and the few remaining patients were transferred to Hildesheim and Lüneburg. The buildings continued to be used as the Wunstorf Provincial Youth Home. It housed welfare pupils who, in the view of the Nazi-led social welfare authorities, behaved in an inappropriate manner and could not remain with their families. Occasionally, there were transfers to the »children’s ward« in Lüneburg. The referrals were made by the home’s doctor, Willi Baumert, who was also the head of the Lüneburg »children’s ward«.

After the end of the war, the Provincial Youth Home in Wunstorf was dissolved. In July 1945, the State Mental Hospital and Nursing Home was reopened. In March 1952, it was renamed the Lower Saxony State Hospital in Wunstorf. In May 1954, Hans Heinze, former head of the Görden »Children’s Department« and chief expert in the »Reich Committee«, established the Wunstorf Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department there and remained its chief physician until his retirement.

Until the 1970s, human experiments with drugs were carried out at the Wunstorf Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic. Children from homes affiliated with the Wunstorf Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic were given unapproved drugs without their knowledge and their effects were tested. In 2007, the Lower Saxony State Hospital in Wunstorf was sold to the Hannover Region Clinic. In 2013, the psychiatric ward was affiliated with Hannover-Langenhagen. In 2017, the drug trials became public knowledge. From 1961 onwards, Hans Heinze’s son, Hans Heinze Jr., was also involved in the trials as a doctor and his father’s successor.