The Charité traces its origins to 1710. The complex is spread over four campuses and comprises around 3,000 beds, 15,500 staff, 8,000 students, and more than 60 operating theaters, and has a turnover of two billion euros annually.[4]
The modern history of medicine has been significantly influenced by scientists who worked at the Charité. Rudolf Virchow was the founder of cellular pathology, while Robert Koch developed vaccines for anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis.[5] For his life's work Koch is seen as one of the founders of modern medicine.[6] More than half of all German Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine, including Emil von Behring, Robert Koch, and Paul Ehrlich, have worked at the Charité.
In 2010–2011 the medical schools of Humboldt University and Freie Universität Berlin were united under the roof of the Charité. The admission rate of the reorganized medical school was 3.9% for the 2019–2020 academic year.[7]
History
Complying with an order of King Frederick I of Prussia from 14 November 1709, the hospital was established north of the Berlin city walls in 1710 in anticipation of an outbreak of the bubonic plague that had already depopulated East Prussia. After the plague spared the city, it came to be used as a charity hospital for the poor. On 9 January 1727, King Frederick William I of Prussia gave it the name "Charité", French for "charity".[8]
In the 19th century, after the University of Berlin (today Humboldt University) was founded in 1810, the dean of the medical college Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland integrated the Charité as a teaching hospital in 1828. During this time it became home to such notable medical pioneers as Rudolf Virchow, known as "the father of modern pathology"[10] and whose name is given to the eponymous "Virchow's Method" of autopsy;[11] the Swiss psychiatrist and neurologist Otto Binswanger, whose work in vascular dementia led to the discovery of Binswanger's Disease—so coined by his colleague Alois Alzheimer;[12]Robert Koch, who identified the specific causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax; and Emil von Behring, widely known as a "saviour of children"[13] for his 1894 discovery of a diphtheriaantitoxin at a time when diphtheria was a major cause of child death (among many others).
During the Second World War, the Charité endured the Battle of Berlin and Berlin was taken by the Red Army on 2 May 1945. Though the majority of its original and pre-war structure was damaged or destroyed during the war, it nevertheless was used as a Red Army hospital. The Charité remained in the Soviet Sector of Berlin until the formation of the German Democratic Republic, the GDR (German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR) in 1949, more commonly called East Germany. Under the Communists, standards were largely maintained, and it became a showpiece for East Bloc propaganda during the Cold War. Corpses of Berlin Wall victims were taken here for autopsies.
In 1990, with the reunification of Germany, and in the years following, Charité once again became one of the world's leading research and teaching hospitals.
Organization
The Charité has four different campuses across the city of Berlin with a total of 3,001 beds:[14][1]
In 2001, the Helios Clinics Group acquired the hospitals in Buch with their 1,200 beds.[15] Still, the Charité continues to use the campus for teaching and research and has more than 200 staff members located there.
The Charité encompasses more than 100 clinics and scientific institutes, organized in 17 different departments, referred to as Charité Centers (CC):
CC 1: Health and Human Sciences
CC 2: Basic Sciences (First Year)
CC 3: Dental, Oral and Maxillary Medicine
CC 4: Charité-BIH Center for Therapy Research
CC 5: Diagnostic Laboratory and Preventative Medicine
CC 6: Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology and Nuclear Medicine
CC 7: Anesthesiology, Operating-Room Management and Intensive Care Medicine
CC 8: Surgery
CC 9: Traumatology and Reconstructive Medicine
CC 10: Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center
CC 11: Global Health
CC 12: Internal Medicine and Dermatology
CC 13: Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology and Nephrology
CC 14: Tumor Medicine
CC 15: Neurology, Neurosurgery, Psychiatry
CC 16: Audiology/Phoniatrics, Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology
CC 17: Gynecology, Perinatal, Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine with Perinatal Center & Human Genetics
Overall, 12 of those centers focus on patient care, while the rest focuses on research and teaching. On 1 January 2023, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin – Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts (DHZB) have merged their cardiac medical facilities to form the Deutsches Herzzentrum der Charité (DHZC). The DHZC is located at the three clinical campuses of Charité at Campus Virchow-Klinikum, Campus Charité Mitte and Campus Benjamin Franklin. It comprises a total of eight clinics and institutes with around 2,500 employees and has around 470 beds. It is one of the largest cardiac centres in Germany for the treatment of all cardiovascular diseases in patients of all ages
The Medical History Museum Berlin has a history dating back to 1899. The museum in its current form opened in 1998 and is famous for its pathological and anatomical collection.[16]
In 2021, the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) became the translational research unit of Charité, making the Charité the first university clinic that receives direct and annual financial support by the federal state of Germany.[22] Together with private charity donors like the Johanna Quandt's private excellence initiative or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as financing by the State of Berlin, the new direct federal investments will become the third financial foundation for research at the Charité.[23] In addition, it is part of the Berlin University Alliance, receiving funding from the German Universities Excellence Initiative in 2019.
Notable people
Many famous physicians and scientists worked or studied at the Charité. Indeed, more than half of the German Nobel Prize winners in medicine and physiology come from the Charité.[24] Fifty seven Nobel laureates are affiliated with Humboldt University of Berlin and five with Freie Universität Berlin.
The Charité is one of the main partners of the Einstein Foundation, which was established by the city and state of Berlin in 2009. It is a "foundation that aims to promote science and research of top international caliber in Berlin and to establish the city as a centre of scientific excellence".[25] Research fellows include:
^"History". Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Archived from the original on 10 December 2012. Retrieved 27 October 2015.
^Einhäupl, Karl Max; Ganten, Detlev; Hein, Jakob (2010). "2 Krankenpflege". 300 Jahre Charité – im Spiegel ihrer Institute (in German). Walter de Gruyter. pp. 22–23. ISBN9783110202564. Retrieved 27 October 2015.
^Schorer, C. E. (1992). "Alzheimer and Kraepelin describe Binswanger's Disease". The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. 4 (1): 55–58. doi:10.1176/jnp.4.1.55. PMID1627963.