Retrospective
Forgotten Child Psychiatry at the Villa Adlon: Students at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam Research Previously Unknown Clinic History
A previously little-known chapter of Potsdam's contemporary history is coming into focus for the first time thanks to a teaching research project at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam: the paediatric psychiatric clinic in the Villa Adlon in the Potsdam district of Neu Fahrland. Social Work students, under the Head of Prof Dr Alexandra Schmidt-Wenzel, have investigated the history of the institution, which operated there from 1948 to 1966 - and has hardly been mentioned in the specialist literature to date – as part of a two-semester real-life laboratory.
The starting point for the research was historical documents that were discovered in an attic at the former clinic site in 2016. The students also looked through archive material, conducted interviews with contemporary witnesses - including former patients and staff - and spoke to local residents about their memories of the site. The collaboration was carried out in cooperation with the Informations- und Begegnungszentrum (IBZ) Königsheide and the founding initiative Stiftung Königsheide e. V.
The research provides concrete insights into the history of the institution for the first time: to date, around 1,330 children who were treated there for a total of 39 different diagnoses have been identified by name. However, the surviving documents only cover the period from its foundation in 1948 to around May 1957 and are also incomplete. Researchers therefore assume that at least twice as many children were actually treated at the clinic.
In addition to reconstructing the institutional history, the project also focuses on the personal experiences of former patients and staff. The interviews with contemporary witnesses provide new perspectives on the treatment of mental illness in the GDR's paediatric and adolescent sector and thus close an important research gap.
The results of the teaching research project are not only important for the regional culture of remembrance, but also contribute to the scientific reappraisal of the history of psychiatry in the context of the education, social and health systems of the GDR.
As part of a follow-up project funded by the Brandenburg commissioner for dealing with the consequences of the communist dictatorship, individual questions were explored in greater depth and the research findings were also documented on film. The result is a documentary film that brings together the research, eyewitness accounts and impressions of the historical site.
Despite the new findings, there are still unanswered questions – such as the dissolution of the clinic in 1966 and changes in its administrative affiliation. The results so far therefore form an important basis for further research into the history of the institution and its role in GDR paediatric psychiatry.