By Birgit Buerkner
It is a chapter in GDR history that has received little attention up to now. Thousands of girls and young women who did not conform to the socialist image were admitted to clinics against their will.
They experienced humiliation and sexual violence in so-called venereological wards. “The processing is still in its infancy,” says Christine Bergmann (83), a member of the Independent Commission for Processing Child Sexual Abuse. “Girls from the age of twelve and women were forcibly committed under the pretext of suspected sexually transmitted diseases.”
View of a dormitory in the Prenzlauer Berg Hospital, which was later used to accommodate people with “HwG” (“frequently alternating sexual intercourse”) Photo: Medical Scientific Publishing Company
Prof. Florian Steger (49), Director of the Institute for History, Theory and Ethics of Medicine at the University of Ulm, who has been researching the topic for ten years, says: “They were completely ordinary, average young women who wanted to live. Perhaps they were not anchored so firmly in the desired socialist structure.” After interviewing around 100 people affected and looking through 5,000 medical files, he knows: “There was no aspect of care on the wards. The job was to discipline unpopular young women.” Only 20 to 30 percent actually had an STD.
In this barracks in the Prenzlauer Berg hospital, the patients were held under prison-like conditions Photo: Medical Scientific Publishing Company
Female adolescents who were said to have “frequently changing sexual intercourse” (GDR abbreviation: “HwG”) were visited by employees of the “Central Office” or taken with the police. From 1950, she was initially accommodated in the Prenzlauer Berg hospital on today’s Fröbelstrasse. From 1971, the compulsory admissions ran over the desk of Dr. Günter Elste, chief physician at the Buch Clinic. There he barracked those affected in house 114.
Gynecological examinations were carried out daily, during which tissue samples were taken from the abdomen. In his book “Traumatization through politicized medicine”, Steger lets those affected have their say: “Then it just went behind the curtain one after the other and then it got quite brutal, these gynecological instruments that have such a kink (…) were then introduced and when you were whining, you were insulted, it doesn’t hurt to be with men either.” Injuries and bleeding often occurred.
Those affected now suffer from long-term effects: restlessness, mental disorders, problems with trust.
The Commission calls for help and support for the victims. According to Steger, compensation would also be desirable.