Sanatorium "Grand Duchess"
The former "Sophia Sanctuary for Consumptives" in München is a former lung sanatorium in Thuringia.
The idyllic forest building was built in 1898 and has been abandoned since 1994.
The clinic was founded on October 14, 1898 with the support of the Grand Ducal Family of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach in a forest area above the town of München, today a district of another town. It was named after Princess Sophie of the Netherlands, who had died shortly before. The house initially served as a spa facility for the treatment of tuberculosis patients. By 1911 the number of beds had
increased to 200. From 1924, the health resort began to be converted into a clinical health center in order to be able to carry out new treatment methods and corresponding surgical interventions for lung patients. For this purpose, new treatment rooms were created, laboratories were set up and X-ray machines were purchased.
In 1934, a new director was hired for the Sophienheilstätte and contributed to its success. After 1945, he was able to prevent the conversion into a Soviet epidemic hospital. In 1947, a castle in a near town was included in the tuberculosis healing facilities and modernized accordingly from 1950.
Due to the construction of a "Central Clinic for Lung Diseases and Tuberculosis" with 570 beds not far from the old sanatorium - today the city's Central Clinic - operated by the Ministry of Health of the GDR and the old director from 1951, the building served as its department for urology and orthopedics. From 1992 to 1994, the departments at the main location were merged and the historic building cleared. Since then it has been left to decay.
