New Smallpox House, today Pfrundhaus, at the Waldau

About the building

On the Waldau site in north-east Bern lies a group of old buildings that goes back to the medieval house for lepers and the sick. In 1491 it was moved from the Haspelgässchen to the Breitfeld in the parish of Bolligen; a chapel, the Siechenschlössli of 1598/99 and a house for people with smallpox followed. By the 18th century these buildings were no longer enough. The master builder Ludwig Emanuel Zehender, who had already built the granary here, erected a new house for the sick and for smallpox patients for the State of Bern between 1756 and 1761: the Neues Blatternspital, or New Smallpox House.

It is a generous, fully masonry building on a horseshoe plan, two storeys high under a broken hipped roof. Because the ground falls away to the north, a high sandstone base shows on that side. Corner pilasters carry the continuous cornice, and the windows are evenly spaced all round: rectangular below, segment-arched above. In the middle of the eleven-bay main front opens a sandstone doorway with a segmental arch and an upswept hood. A detail not to miss are the rocaille brackets of 1756 from the Funk workshop, which have never been reworked.

To the north-west a wall of large sandstone blocks encloses a rectangular courtyard, with a small masonry garden house under a hipped roof in its corner (number 127A). In 1762–1764 two farm buildings designed by Niklaus Sprüngli gave the courtyard between the Siechenschlössli and the smallpox house an almost closed shape. A council decision of 1765 merged the house for the sick and the madhouse into the so-called Ausserkrankenhaus. The madhouse of 1749 later grew into the Waldau psychiatric asylum, whose large new building Gottlieb Hebler erected between 1850 and 1855.

Restoration and a complete conversion of the house began in 1989. Since 1993 it has housed the Psychiatry Museum Bern, which calls the building the “Pfründerhaus”. The idea of a collection goes back to 1914, when the psychiatrist Walter Morgenthaler, who discovered the artist Adolf Wölfli, gathered material on the history of psychiatry. The house is rated as worthy of protection and belongs to the Waldau building group.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Bolligenstrasse 127, 127A · Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Baugruppe Waldau · Bauinventar der Stadt Bern: Quartiergeschichte Allmend-Murifeld · Verband der Museen der Schweiz: Psychiatrie-Museum · Wikipedia (de): Gottlieb Hebler · Wikidata: Q106684718