Charité


 * For information on the historic French hospital, please see Hôpital de la Charité.

The Charité is the largest university hospital in Europe. The Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin is the medical school for the Free University of Berlin and the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Initially built in 1710 in Berlin-Mitte in anticipation of an outbreak of bubonic plague, it came to be used as a charity hospital for the poor after the plague spared the city. In 1727 Frederick William I of Prussia gave it the name Charité, meaning "charity".



Many famous physicians and scientists worked for at least part of their careers at the Charité. Among them were:

Heinrich Adolf von Bardeleben, Emil Adolf von Behring, August Bier, Theodor Billroth, Hans Erhard Bock, Karl Bonhoeffer, Hermann Emil Fischer, Werner Forssmann, Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach, Paul Ehrlich, Friedrich Theodor von Frerichs, Wilhelm Griesinger, Hermann von Helmholtz, Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle, Herbert Herxheimer, Rahel Hirsch, Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland, Robert Koch, Bernhard von Langenbeck, Leonor Michaelis, Rudolf Nissen, Hermann Oppenheim, Samuel Mitja Rapoport, Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Curt Schimmelbusch, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Johann Lukas Schönlein, Heinrich Schulte, Theodor Schwann, Walter Stoeckel, Rudolf Virchow, August von Wassermann, Caspar Friedrich Wolff, Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek.

Today, 7,500 students are enrolled at the Charité. It treats 1,080,000 outpatients and 128,000 inpatients in 3,500 beds annually. 14,400 people are employed at its four locations in Berlin:


 * Campus Benjamin Franklin (CBF) in Berlin-Steglitz
 * Campus Berlin Buch (CBB) in Berlin-Buch
 * Charité Campus Mitte (CCM) in Berlin-Mitte
 * Campus Virchow Klinikum (CVK) in Berlin-Wedding

Strictly speaking, the locations in Mitte, Steglitz and Wedding are independent medical centers, each providing patients with the full range of medical treatments available in modern medicine. However, special research and therapy focuses exist, such as the German Cardiology Center Berlin (German: Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin, DHZB) at the Campus Virchow Klinikum, the Center for Outer Space Medicine at the Campus Benjamin Franklin, the German Rheumatology Research Center at the Campus Charité Mitte, and the Center for Molecular and Clinical Cardiology at the Campus Berlin Buch. The DHZB possesses the largest heart transplantion program in Germany and, after London and Paris, the third largest world-wide.