University of Leipzig Medical Center
The medical faculty of the Leipzig University was founded in 1415, a few years after the university itself was founded in 1409. As at all European universities, medical knowledge was initially disseminated in a purely theoretical manner. The first step towards modern, scientifically based medicine was taken in 1704 with the establishment of the first anatomical theater (Theatrum anatomicum) by Johann Christian Schamberg. In 1799 the "Institute for Clinical Education" was founded in the Jakobshospital, where patient examinations, surgical demonstrations and dissection exercises took place for the first time. Johann Christian August Heinroth was appointed to the world's first chair for "psychological therapy" (psychiatry) in 1811. The current main location of the medical faculty in Liebigstrasse was founded in 1871 by Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich and Carl Thiersch as the “St. Jakob Municipal Hospital”. In 1889 the landmark of the medical district was opened with the “Red House”. In the period from approx. 1880 to the Second World War, medicine experienced its greatest heyday at the University of Leipzig. With researchers like Paul Flechsig, Carl Ludwig and Wilhelm His, Leipzig was one of the world's leading centres of scientific teaching and research. In 1891 Otto Heubner founded the University Children's Clinic. Large parts of the medical district were destroyed during World War II. The first post-war building was opened in 1956 with the Institute for Anatomy; all other institutes were gradually rebuilt. In 1953 the St. Jakob Hospital was transferred to the university. The department for inpatient psychotherapy and psychosomatic medicine, founded in 1953, was one of the first in Germany. Almost all clinics and institutes have been built or completely renovated since 1990. The hospital, which founded the first clinic for cardiovascular surgery in Europe in 1961, no longer has its own cardiac surgery department, as the private heart center in Leipzig in the Probstheida district has been a university clinic since 1994, according to a contract between the State of Saxony and Rhön-Klinikum AG. Up to the opening of the Center for Conservative Medicine in November 2008, around 350 million euros had been invested in the Liebigstrasse location. By around mid-2009, all departments moved from the old ward block to the new clinic buildings.