Order of St. John - The Sanatorium in the Mountains Revisited (Part 3)

Here are the last couple of pictures from our revisit of the old sanatorium. I am sure that this was not our last visit there.
I definitely would like to take some night shots in this place :)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Revisit | Revisit 2 | Revisit 3

Order of St. John - The Sanatorium in the Mountains Revisited (Part 2)

The story of the sanatorium has been told in the posts about my first visit, so I'll just leave you to the second part of my revisit...

Stay tuned for Part 3!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Revisit | Revisit 2 | Revisit 3

Order of St. John - The Sanatorium in the Mountains Revisited

On our way back from the medieval castle we decided to pay a quick visit to the abandoned St. John's Sanatorium.
We drove op there, honked the horn and Jens - the caretaker who I mentioned in the report about our first visit - showed up and let us in.
We had a nice talk with him and were given the chance to say hi to a bunch of his beautiful Greenland dogs before we started walking through the sanatorium.
It was like visiting an old friend, it felt strangely familiar.
But it was amazing to see what wind and weather can do to a building in less than a year.

Some of the photos may seem familiar to you. That's because I tried to remember some of the shots I took during our last visit and recreate them. So if you're interested, just check out the posts of the first visit and find out what has changed.

Here are the first couple of photos.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Revisit | Revisit 2 | Revisit 3

Relicts of Socialism - The Party's Cadre Factory

In the German Democratic Rebublic - Eastern Germany - the ruling party was the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, Socialist Unity Party of Germany).
The political system united the principles of a people's republic with the self-conception of a socialist state.
Since the form of government was in this case characterized by one dominating party, it was in fact a party's dictatorship.
The primary political goal of the party - establishing and maintaining a dictatorship of the proletariat - could only be accomplished by controlling and influencing every aspect of society.
One way to realize the indoctrination of the people, was founding party schools in a strong hierarchichal manner. On the lowest level are the community schools, above that are the regional schools and on top either the party's university or the russian communist party's school in Moscow.

This is a regional school of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
It was founded in 1979.
The complex consists of the boarding school building with 6 floors and 174 two-bed rooms, a canteen with two floors and more than 200 seats and a café with about 120 seats and a four-floor lecturing building with a 500-seat auditorium.
After the German reunification, the building was sold to the city and used as a school building for the school for public administration until the year 2000 when it was finally abandoned.
In January of 2013, a large part of the school became a victim of a large fire. There is almost nothing left of the lecturing building.

The Abandoned Children's Hospital (Part 4)

Now for the final post about the children's hospital.
Only ten years after the new ward was completed, the hospital was closed down on Jauary 1,1997.
Since then, the buildings have been exposed to weather and vandalism, almost nothing is left of the original architectural beauty.
Eight years ago, hope arose that things would become better: The state had sold the buildings to a Russian investor who wanted to build a big health care center with a clinic as well as conference and research facilities.
Until today, nothing happened.
Speculations say that the Russian owners are deliberately letting the buildings decay to go around the monument protection before building anything new.

Here are the couple of last pictures I took during my visit.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

The Abandoned Children's Hospital (Part 3)

In 1920, the municipality was incorporated into the city west of it and the "Milk-Treatment-Facility" was separated from the hospial soon after that and became the city's property.
The facility became the nucleus of the city's new milk industry.
Later in the 20th century, the hospital complex expanded and in 1985, construction began on a completely new ward which was opened in 1987.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3