Anstalt Irsee

From 1849 to 1972, Irsee Monastery housed a psychiatric institution. After Erlangen (1846 for Middle Franconia) and Irsee (1849 for Swabia), “district insane asylums” were built in all Bavarian districts within 25 years. Today's psychiatric services in the Free State of Bavaria look back on a long tradition.

Today Irsee Monastery is an education center and conference hotel. An information room is reminiscent of the history of psychiatry. The former Prosektur is open to the public as a memorial room for the victims of Nazi “euthanasia”. The annual memorial event for the victims of the Nazi patient murders from 1940 to 1945 takes place in the former institutional cemetery.
The app's stories give you insights into the lives of “mental nurses” and patients. You will find out what role the carnival costume of an “East African giant rooster” plays in the history of the institution. Historical images and documents illustrate everyday life at the institution. For example, in a film from 1940 you can follow the carnival parade and watch patients working in agriculture.

You will find that therapeutic concepts that are over a hundred years old are surprisingly current. The same applies to ethical questions that run like a red thread through the history of psychiatry.
We cordially invite you: Take a look for yourself!

On September 1, 1849, the first inpatient psychiatric hospital in Swabia was opened in Irsee Monastery as the “Kreis-Insanstalt Irsee”. Its statutes state: “The purpose of the institution is to heal and care for curable and incurable mental patients of both sexes. ... Treating the sick as carefully and humanely as possible is the first duty of all officials and [employees] of the institution. … Any physical or mental abuse is strictly prohibited.”

Initially there are 80 places available for mentally ill people in Irsee, later up to 200. But the need is great and the institution is soon overcrowded. In 1876 the “Bavarian Sanatorium for the Mentally Ill in Kaufbeuren” was rebuilt. From now on, Irsee is a Kaufbeuren branch, mainly for chronically ill patients.

During National Socialism, the Irsee institution was also involved in “euthanasia” campaigns in a variety of ways: 400 patients were taken from here to killing centers and murdered there. In Irsee itself, more than 800 people died between 1940 and 1945 due to neglect, starvation or fatal medication.

In 1972 the Irsee institution was closed due to structural defects. After general renovation, the monastery complex was reopened in 1981 as a conference, education and cultural center for the Swabia district. At the same time, the first permanent memorial for the victims of Nazi “euthanasia” from Bavarian sanatoriums and nursing homes was inaugurated in the institution cemetery. Since 2010, the memorial event “Lights Against Forgetting” has taken place there on November 1st. In 1996 the former Prosektur became a place of remembrance. It will be renovated in 2023 and the memorial room will be given a new design. “Stumbling blocks” in front of the monastery remind us of murdered patients. The information room on the history of the institution with an associated app will open in 2024.

“Irsee Institution – inform, commemorate, educate” embeds the local events in the social and scientific context of their time. Individual life and suffering stories illuminate different perspectives on the history of psychiatry. We invite you to pause, reflect and remember. What happened cannot be undone. The victims of the inhumane Nazi policy were people like us. This also applies to the perpetrators and those who helped them or resisted them. It is up to us to learn from history.