Kölmel:Charité 91

A history of the Charité, the world-famous hospital in the heart of Berlin, at the time of reunification At the beginning of 1991, with the aftershocks of reunification still having Germany in their grip, Hans Wolfgang Kölmel, Professor of Neurology at the Charlottenburg Clinic, decides to apply for a position as a neurologist in the new federal states. He was offered the position of acting director of the Department of Neurology at the Charité, the unique hospital whose worldwide reputation had once been established by medical greats such as Rudolf Virchow, Emil Adolf von Behring, Paul Ehrlich, Robert Koch and Ferdinand Sauerbruch, and which had continued its work under difficult conditions during the forty years of the GDR, just a few metres from the Berlin Wall. Its world fame did not protect the Charité from going through a difficult process of upheaval in the first few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as did many GDR organisations. Its labour structures were shaken, the people deeply insecure. The author describes the tension and fear that prevailed in meetings, the removal of informal employees of the Ministry of State Security, the spying on individuals, which led to despair and even suicide. Kölmel also describes the sometimes dramatic, sometimes comical attempts to lead the clinic out of a state of increasing paralysis. As an example, Kölmel reviews his first six months at the Charité, allowing the reader to accompany him on his first steps into uncharted territory. The descriptions of people, situations and rooms are often razor-sharp, with a love of detail and not without a touch of humour.