Monday, 24 August, 2020
Considering my goal to explore what’s close to me, I made a list of possible walks and places to see within a kilometre or two. When Krish asked me if I wanted to go on a walk, I told him I’d been wanting to revisit the German Hospital and Fassett Square.
They are actually really close by and have always been some of my favourite things in my part of this borough. So off we went.
There’s a lot of complicated history to the German Hospital. It was founded in 1845 primarily to treat poor German-speaking immigrants in the East End. The Hospital occupied three houses converted from the Dalston Infant Orphan Asylum, and had 12 beds. When the North London railway came through the area, the hospital and its garden were separated so the governors built a new building in the garden. It opened in 1864. It now had 100 beds. By 1890 there were 142 beds, a new Sisters’ House was added in 1911 and a third block in 1912.
The nursing care provided by the Protestant Deaconesses inspired Florence Nightingale to visit the German Hospital twice before enrolling for three months’ training at the parent Institute for Protestant Deaconesses in Kaiserwerth, Germany.
The two world wars made things more complex for the institution. During WW1 there were strong anti-German feelings while the staff remained there. In 1931 the hospital had 161 beds and a new wing was built (now Bruno House) for maternity and children’s wards. This brought the bed total to 192. During WW2 things got more serious. Dr Otto Bernhard Bode, the head of the hospital in the 1930s, was a member of the Nazi party. All the German staff were arrested and interned as enemy aliens. English staff now took over.
After the war, in 1948 the NHS took over. There were now 217 beds. From 1974, it became a psychiatric and psychogeriatric Hospital, closing in 1987 when all of its services moved to Homerton Hospital.
The Grade II listed buildings were developed by Landmark Housing as affordable housing for those who earn less than £22,000 a year. I’ll take one!
I hope you like it as much as I do.
Just beyond the church is the former Hamburg Lutheran Church, now the Faith Tabernacle Church of God. It was built in 1876 in the German Gothic style and used by both staff and patients. The minister at the outbreak of WW2 was Revd. Schonberg, a fervent Nazi, who fled the country in 1939. It’s quite a lovely church.
