Charité

Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin sees itself as a toplevel European location for medical research and patient care. Originally established in 1710 as a quarantine hospital outside the gates of Berlin, the Charité is inseparably linked with innovative scientifi c, medical and nursing achievements as well as with the names of outstanding physicians, including the pathologist Rudolf Virchow, the surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch and the founder of modern bacteriology, Robert Koch. The Charite‘s present-day corporate structure is the result of a comprehensive reorganization of Berlin‘s university medicine sector following the reunifi cation of Germany. This process involved several stages and was completed in 2003 with the merger of the medical faculties of the Free University and Humboldt University, together with their respective university hospitals. Following the union of all university medical facilities in the east and west of the city, the Charité is now one the largest university hospitals in Europe. Its clinics and institutes, which are organized in 17 so-called CharitéCenters, employ some 10,400 members of staff – not including inactive full-time and thirdparty funded staff. They all are committed to the mission “Research, Teaching, Healing, Helping” – in patient care and scientific investigation as well as in training the medical and nursing staff of tomorrow.