Bethanien at Mariannenplatz

Berlin · Germany · Hospital

Generations of Kreuzbergers have met the deaconess in her headscarf in the long corridors — in the house whose name can be read as house of misery.

The castle-like Bethanien on Mariannenplatz was built in 1847 as the deaconesses' hospital, and the sisters are said never to have stopped making their rounds. Generations of Kreuzbergers have told of footsteps in the long yellow corridors when no one is there, and of a figure in deaconess dress glimpsed in a doorway and gone the moment you turn. The building's own director has acknowledged that Bethanien has always been a place of myth-making, and the writer Sarah Khan set an entire ghost hunt here in her 2013 book on Berlin's spectres. The name carries an uncanny double meaning: Bethanien can be read from the Hebrew as house of misery. A young Theodor Fontane worked in its pharmacy before he became a novelist, and for more than 150 years the house gathered sickness and death. Today the halls are artists' studios — but the emptied corridors are still nobody's favourite place after dark.

FAQ

Where is Bethanien at Mariannenplatz located?

Bethanien at Mariannenplatz is in Berlin, Germany.

More haunted places in Berlin

Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.