On the outer wall of Shevet Achim’s building, alongside the busy sidewalk of Prophet’s Street, is a large blue plaque with these words: “The Marienstift Children’s Hospital, 1872-1899.” Below is an article in Hebrew and English. Adjacent to the plaque, on the outside of the main doorway, is another faded-metal sign: “Ben-Dor, Architects and Engineers.” Passersby stop and read. Many knock to look inside.
From the last battle of the Crusades in 1291 to modern times, Jerusalem languished in the backwater of successive Muslim empires: Mameluks, Turks, Ottomans. A relic of religion, the city received little financial support or administrative attention. But things began to change for Jerusalem in the mid-19th century. An increase of European interests brought money to the city, making possible the construction of new buildings beyond the walls of an Old City festered with overcrowding and poor sanitation.
The building from which Shevet Achim works, 29 Prophets Street (רחוב הנביאים 29), was built by the Syrian bishop as a private residence in the style of an Arab country home. The exact year of its construction is unknown, but it appears in the 1864 survey of Jerusalem drawn by British geographer Charles Wilson (below). By contrast, the first Jewish neighborhood built outside the Old City, “Yemen Moshe,” was completed in 1891.
In 1868 a young German physician named Max Sandreczky moved to Jerusalem with his new bride, Johanna. He found work at the German Deaconess Hospital. Four years later, in 1872, they founded together the first hospital in the Middle East specifically for children, the Marienstift Kinderhospital. Although the Sandreczkys were devout Christians, the hospital was built not as a tool for proselytism but to serve the children of the Holy Land irrespective of their religious, ethnic, or economic backgrounds.
(Staff and patients of the Marienstift Kinderhospital in the year of its opening, 1872. Dr. Sandreczky is seated right of center, with balding head and dark beard.)
For nearly thirty years the Marienstift Kinderhospital was operated by the Sandreczky family. Max was the lead surgeon, physician, and administrator; Johanna and their three daughters rounded out the staff as nurses, cleaners, and caretakers. When the hospital opened in 1872 there were six beds and two cradles, and that year 107 children were received. As the family gained trust with locals as being medically excellent and as having no ulterior motives of conversion, the numbers grew. By 1899, the final year of operation, 555 children were received.
Dr. Sandreczky was a progressive physician. On the heels of enlightenment and nationalistic thinking, he forwarded the ideas of the child as an individual and the future. In addition to the broad spectrum of knowledge he needed to treat the various conditions of his patients, his interests and contributions to medicine were these: the psychological benefits of occupational therapy for the child, providing toys and games during the period of recovery; he pioneered the practice of rooming the sick child with his or her mother, as her presence would be a mental and practical aid to the child. He was early to recognize dirt as a culture media for harmful bacteria, and emphasized sanitation in the hospital; his advanced research on leprosy was published in English and German language medical journals. And his medical role at the hospital was matched by his administrative role. Refraining from proselytism, the hospital did not receive denominational backing. Rather, it was through a network of personal friends and supporters in Europe and the United States that the work was supported, and whatever need remained Sandreczky supplied personally.
(View of the neighborhood north of the Old City of Jerusalem, 1875. The Marienstift Kinderhospital is Hopital all. pour les enfants.)
The story has a tragic end: in June 1899 Sandreczky took his own life. The following year the doors of the hospital closed. The reasons were many. For a fuller telling of the Marienstift Kinderhospital and the remarkable man behind it, see the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, August 1998, accessible here:
http://courses.md.huji.ac.il/96854/childhospital/assets/paper.pdf. Much of the material for this webpage has been drawn from this source.
In the decades following the building saw many different residents. Arthur Koestler, the Hungarian journalist, author, and activist, lived and wrote from this house during his years in Palestine. Also setting up shop were two architects, the Ben-Dor brothers. For many years their office was here, during which time they made an invention that was to greatly affect the development of modern Jerusalem. When the British took control of Palestine following World War I it was decided by the governor that new buildings in Jerusalem were to be constructed only from “Jerusalem Stone,” a locally quarried white limestone. This made growth slow, laborious, and expensive. The Ben Dor brothers, understanding the building trade, developed an artificial way of producing this stone from concrete: the wet cement was poured into the slabs of a new structure, and then given the appearance of Jerusalem Stone by application of a special concrete stamp. Without overstating it, this new technology sparked a building revolution in Jerusalem. Today at Shevet Achim, in the place where we park our fleet of strollers, a 3’x3’ sampling of the Ben Dor’s artificial stone stands.
