Upper Bavarian Eglfing-Haar sanatorium and nursing home

In 1905, due to overcrowding in the Munich “local lunatic asylum,” the Eglfing sanatorium and nursing home was opened, and on adjacent land, the Haar institution in 1912. For economic reasons, the two institutions were merged in 1931 to form the Eglfing-Haar sanatorium and nursing home. With its typical pavilion style with church and farm, the institution had the character of a village. Children and adults of both sexes and all confessions from all over Bavaria were treated and cared for there. Most patients were transferred from the Nußbaumstraße Psychiatric Hospital and the psychiatric department of the Schwabing Hospital. With approximately 3000 patients, it was one of the largest institutions in the Third Reich.

In the 1930s, funding cuts led to a steady deterioration in patients' living conditions. During the war, personnel was drafted; for air raid protection reasons, many buildings served the university hospitals as an auxiliary hospital; a reserve barracks was built. There was only a little space left for the patients.
Starting in 1935, ‘racial hygiene’ trainings were conducted in the institution for more than 20,000 participants. These were primarily members of NS organizations and medical students, police officers, official of theWehrmacht and of criminal institutions. A specially appointed “geneticist” took over the “genetic inventory” and created family trees of patients’ families.

More than 1700 people were forcibly sterilized in Eglfing-Haar. Under the medical leadership of the fanatical National Socialist Hermann Pfannmüller, the institution developed into a place of selection and annihilation. In the “children’s specialty department,” more than 332 children were killed with medication overdoses; more than 440 people died in the two 'starvation houses’. Starting from this institution, in the course of the ‘Action T4,’ 2100 people were sent to the gas chambers of the Grafeneck and Hartheim killing centers. In addition to 900 patients from the institution, these were especially patients in church-run institutions. Eglfing-Haar was the collection point for approximately 180 Jewish institution patients from all over Bavaria, who were taken from here to the killing centers and murdered there. At various stations in Eglfing-Haar, more than 1400 adult patients died due to medication overdoses, deprivation of food, and neglect. 35 patients were transferred to the Dachau Concentration Camp.

The former ‘starvation houses’ and the ‘children's specialty department’ continued to be used to treat institutional patients after 1945; there was no information there about the crimes committed. It was only on January 18, 1990 that a memorial by the sculptor Josef Gollwitzer was unveiled on the hospital grounds with the inscription “In memory of the victims of euthanasia during the Nazi era and as a warning”. On the plaque, the victims of the 'children’s specialty department,’ the starvation diet, and ‘Action T4’ are named.