Städtisches Klinikum Görlitz opened in 1905 – with four departments and 324 beds. The facility was able to accommodate the treatment of 200 patients. Over a century later, the Clinic can look back on a turbulent history, two World Wars, the period between and afterwards the gradual establishment of the healthcare sector. Economic and technical developments, changes in government, currency reforms and rapid progress in the field of medicine have shaped the face of Städtisches Klinikum. Today it is the largest specialist care hospital east of Dresden, providing 634 beds in 17 specialist clinics. Approx. 65,000 inpatients and outpatients are treated each year.
But hospitals started to emerge in Görlitz long before 1905. In 1536, the city provided a house in the town centre, located on what is now Berliner Straße, to treat sick persons that could not be cared for in their own homes. It was enlarged in 1844, but the population numbers rose so steadily that it was soon bursting at the seams. The modern-day Städtisches Klinikum was opened in 1905 as the municipal clinic and then expanded in 1920. In 1955, under the medical directorship of the surgeon Professor Heinz Funke, the foundation was laid for the creation of our current hospital as an institution of specialist care. A designated district hospital, patient numbers grew so quickly that space very soon became tight again. Several external clinics were established in Görlitz.
Necessitated for capacity reasons, this decentralisation was unfavourable both organisationally and economically, so the structure was abandoned once more with the construction of the central new building (Building A) and the new psychiatric building (Building P) in 2004. Since then, the Clinic locations have been grouped together on the 100,000 square-metre complex along Girbigsdorfer Straße.
Thanks to the Görlitz Municipal Archives for the historical images by the city photographer Robert Scholz.
