Remembrance: Representatives of MHB, church and municipality unveil memorial plaque

Neuruppin, 22 November 2024

A memorial plaque was officially unveiled at the cemetery of the former psychiatric institution in Neuruppin Treskow on 19 November. The sign has information on the graveyard which was set up more than 100 years ago and given up in the 1970s, and the fate of persons interred there. The site was connected with the Landesanstalt Neuruppin founded in 1897 (today Universitätsklinikum Ruppin-Brandenburg), where over 1000 psychiatric patients were treated, and was the final resting place for patients and staff members without family.

The hospital in Neuruppin became an intermediate station in the NS euthanasia program T4, the systematic mass murder of persons with mental and physical impairments. Arrivals were registered for onward transportation to killing centers in Brandenburg an der Havel and Bernburg an der Saale. Even after the end of the T4 program in August 1941, murder continued in many institutions through medication, neglect or starvation. Many victims were interred in the hospital cemetery. Several people died in May 1945 when the Red Army arrived in Neuruppin on the first of the month, seized the hospital buildings and violated female staff. These committed suicide afterwards, and others as well who had been involved in the euthanasia program.  

The plaque with the entire history of the cemetery was erected on the initiative of the working group “History of Medicine and Psychology” at the MHB Institute of Anatomy. MHB students first developed an interest in the cemetery and its past in 2017. The working group which includes representatives of the church and the Universitätsklinikum Ruppin-Brandenburg (ukrb) was formed in 2021.

Neuruppin’s mayor Nico Ruhle presented the plaque at a site “which is just being rediscovered and brought back to awareness”. He praised the initiative as an impressive collaborative project. Thanks went to the working group, but in particular to the hospital archivist who, so Pastor Thomas Klemm-Wollny, played a valuable role in locating burial grounds and preserving knowledge about the cemetery history.

Medical historian Prof. Andreas Jüttemann pointed to the difficulty of combining remembrance and detailed information in one place. He felt confident that the plaque would draw more attention to the site and its history.