In a small
town in the state of Hessen in southern Germany there is a long street
situated near the centre of the town overlooked at one end by an enormous
hotel. Along most of the length of the street there are private
clinics making it a veritable Harley Strasse! The first clinic on the
street lies derelict now but it was originally the combined home and
practise of a urology specialist, Doktor Klaus Kraft.
Born in
1910, it appears Herr Doktor Kraft practised with his wife and/or another
partner. He died in October 1988 at the age of 78 but the house was
clearly still occupied for some time afterwards - whether or not it still
functioned as a clinic after his demise is unclear - until his wife
eventually passed away. The house lies derelict now just a few yards from
the busy centre of town and it is very much a time capsule with masses of
interesting artefacts scattered about everywhere you look. The fact of
there being so much stuff left behind would tend to indicate that in all
likelihood the doctor and his wife had no children, or that possibly they
were pre-deceased but it has proved singularly difficult to find out
anything much at all about this enigmatic location.
The
building oozes an atmosphere of the macabre, not least on the ground floor
where there are two consulting/operating rooms complete with an array of
medical equipment still in place - drugs, surgical equipment, couches with
leg stirrups, and even the operating lights. In an anteroom off one of the
consulting rooms there is a large trolley upon which there are eight human
kidneys pickled in formaldehyde in square glass cases!
It appears
the doctor had a strange taste in art for there are several prints of
females in pretty pastel summer dresses dotted around the house, not in
itself anything particularly unusual until closer inspection reveals that
the women wearing the dresses are skeletal and very much in the style of
the renowned German artist H. R. Geiger, he of 'Alien' and 'Necronomicon'
fame...
Very odd
indeed!
Also on the
ground floor there is a room which must have been really lovely in it's
time, for it looks out across a large private garden and has heavily
stacked book shelves along much of the walls - clearly it was a study or a
library. A quick look at some of the titles was interesting in itself, one
potentially pointing to Nazi sympathies for it was a title on Albert
Speer, Hitler's architect. Given that the doctor was at his prime during
the Nazi era this is perhaps not particularly surprising.
The bright
and airy first floor is reached by a grand curving staircase and
constitutes the living area of the house with a lounge plenty big enough
for a full size Steinway grand. But here again there is a hint of the
macabre for a large, moth eaten, stuffed fox sits atop the mouldering
remains of the once mighty piano. Someone in the household was very
much into hunting for there are a number of animal skins and the horns of
small deer or mountain goats left lying about. We also found several black
and white photographs, presumably of Doctor Kraft and his wife, which look
like they were taken on holidays in the early 1950s. A well equipped
kitchen opens off the first floor hall but bizarrely there is also what
appears to be a small ward to the rear of the kitchen hinting at
in-patient treatment on a limited scale. Towards the front of the house we
found a room containing several wardrobes with clean and immaculately
pressed lady's clothing left hanging there, some of it still in plastic
wrap as though it has just come back from the dry cleaners.
The top
floor is the bedroom area where there are also a number of rooms which
looked very much like they were used as office space, but there is so much
stuff heaped up that it's hard to be sure of anything in this house!
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Below is a
selection of the photographs we took in and around this intriguing private
urology clinic in July 2012.
To
view any of the photographs in a far bigger size then click on the
image of your choice and it will open in a new window.
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