The Heiligen-Geist-Hospital (Holy Spirit Hospital) in Lübeck (Koberg 11) is one of the oldest social institutions still in existence in the world, having been inaugurated in 1286.
“With its three-gabled representative frontage and four slender spires, magnificent church hall and the long house in which the beds of the needy were lined up in rows, the hospital is one of the most important architectural monuments in Gothic red-brick style. It owned many estates in and around Lübeck, and the income from these estates was sufficient to look after the poor and the sick”1.
The Great Entrance Hall
A statue of Saint Luke in the Great Entrance Hall
The Marienaltar in the Great Entrance Hall
A model of the original hospital can be seen in the Great Entrance Hall
In the main mediaeval ward, two rows of tiny cubbyholes, referred to as Kabäuschen, replaced the free-standing rows of beds from 1820 onwards, offering six square metres of privacy2.
One of the cubbyholes is still furnished today as it was in the late 1970s.
- Photos by Sal Mangione (April 2023)
- Locate the item on this Google Map
Bibliography
– Karl Bernhard Kruse, Die Baugeschichte des Heiligen-Geist-Hospitals zu Lübeck, Rudolf Habelt GMBH, Bonn 1997, pp. 293