Just a few minutes from the bustling center of Prague stands a place that many people pass by without noticing. Veleslavín Castle, hidden in the greenery of the Prague 6 district, seems inconspicuous at first glance. But once you delve into its history, you will discover a fascinating story full of noblemen, prominent doctors, presidents and dramatic events of World War II. If you like discovering lesser-known places with a unique atmosphere, Veleslavín Castle will surprise you. I visited it during the Open House Prague event, when I had the opportunity to walk around this unique place with a guide.
VELESLAVÍN, ON A STRATEGIC PATH
The history of Veleslavín dates back to the early Middle Ages. The first mentions of this area date back to 993, when it belonged to the Břevnov Monastery. However, the castle itself was built in the Baroque period, probably between 1730 and 1750. It was built on the site of the original farmstead and still bears the typical features of the high Czech Baroque. The famous architect Kilián Ignác Dientzenhofer is often cited as the author of the project, although historians have never 100% confirmed his authorship.
Walking around the castle grounds today, it’s hard to imagine that European history was written here. In 1757, during the Prussian siege of Prague, the Prussian King Frederick II, also known as Frederick the Great, reportedly stayed here. Veleslavín was then located on a strategic route to the city center, and the castle served as a convenient base for army command.
FAMOUS FIRST REPUBLIC SANATORIUM
However, Veleslavín Castle did not experience its greatest fame until the 1930s. In 1910, it was purchased by doctors Leo Kosák and Professor Oskar Fischer, who founded a modern private sanatorium for nervous and pulmonary diseases. In the Prague of that time, it was an exceptionally progressive facility that offered not only treatment, but also the peaceful surroundings of the castle park and individual care.
The sanatorium was considered one of the most modern facilities in Czechoslovakia at the time. Fischer strongly opposed the brutal treatment of the mentally ill at the time. During World War I, he even clashed sharply with his superior at a military clinic, who sadistically used extremely strong electric shocks to treat traumatized soldiers. Fischer managed to get him dismissed and introduced a radically different, humane approach in his own sanatorium.
WORK TREATMENT
Patients suffering from depression, neurosis, psychosis or addiction were treated with a combination of modern psychiatry and a humane approach. Psychotherapy, rest regime and occupational therapy played an important role. Patients spent their time doing meaningful manual activities, gardening or crafts in the castle park, which helped them regain a sense of usefulness. The peace of the extensive forest park, long walks in the fresh air, rest regime and therapeutic baths were used.
Due to the clean air of the then Veleslavín, the sanatorium functioned as a climatic spa. The treatment of tuberculosis and other lung diseases at that time consisted mainly of climatotherapy. Patients lay in the fresh air on loungers, where they tried to strengthen their immunity.
FIRST STORY
OSKAR FISCHER, PSYCHIATRIST AND NEUROPATHOLOGIST IN VELESLAVÍN
Professor Oskar Fischer, a prominent Czech psychiatrist and neuropathologist of Jewish origin, became one of the most important figures associated with the castle. He was one of the pioneers of research into brain diseases. He was born in Slaný. He came from a family of devout Slaný Jews, and his father, Josef Fischer, was the first head of the local synagogue.
He studied medicine at the German University in Prague and then worked as a psychiatrist at the local clinic. He was actively involved in public affairs and during the First Republic he ran for parliament for the liberal German Democratic Freedom Party (Deutsche demokratische Freiheitspartei), which opposed nationalism.
After the end of World War I, during which he served as a military doctor, he met his future wife Františka, a volunteer nurse for the Red Cross, in a prison camp in Pardubice. They had twins, a daughter, Lotte, and a son, Heinz. As children from a so-called “mixed marriage” (the mother was Christian, the father Jewish), they faced enormous pressure from the Nuremberg Laws during the Protectorate.
The rise of Nazism in 1939 meant the end of everything Fischer had built. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, MUDr. Fischer was expelled from academia for racial reasons. He lost the right to practice the practice he loved so much. He tried to save at least something. In 1939, he quickly transferred his half of the mansion to his wife Franziska.
In the summer of 1941, he and his partner MUDr. Leo Kosák were arrested by the Gestapo and forced to sign a contract to sell the Veleslavín complex. The property was transferred to the so-called Emigration Fund for Bohemia and Moravia. The funds obtained from the sale of Aryanized property were used by the Nazi regime directly to finance the deportations of the Jewish population. What a paradox, isn’t it?
In 1941, he was arrested by the Gestapo in his Prague apartment. He was deported by the Nazis to the Terezín ghetto. He died there on February 28, 1942, at the age of 66. Although his death certificate stated that he died of heart failure, the Nazis routinely covered up violent deaths in this way. According to some sources, Oskar Fischer was beaten in Terezín.
ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE COULD HAVE BEEN CALLED FISCHER’S
Oskar Fischer belonged to the renowned Prague School of Neuropathology under Arnold Pick. This school was in fierce competition with the Munich School of Emil Kraepelin, where Alois Alzheimer worked.
When Alzheimer described the disease in 1906 (published in 1907), he relied on the case of a single patient (Augusta Deterová). Completely independently of him, Fischer published a study in 1907 based on 12 to 16 positive findings. Fischer was the first to correctly describe that the so-called senile plaques in the brain are not made up of normal cellular structures, but are deposits of a foreign protein (now known as amyloid).
In 1910, the head of the Munich clinic, Emil Kraepelin, published an influential textbook on psychiatry, officially naming the disease Alzheimer’s disease. The Prague School did not have such a strong marketing and publishing influence, and Fischer’s name was therefore forgotten internationally. However, in modern medicine, the more accurate term Alzheimer’s-Fischer dementia is sometimes used.
His work was extremely progressive in its time, yet he remained for many decades in the shadow of his more famous colleague. His work was in many ways more detailed. It was not until modern medicine began to fully appreciate how fundamental Fischer’s contribution to neurology was. The idea that research of world importance was being created in an inconspicuous chateau on the outskirts of Prague gives the place a unique atmosphere.
SECOND STORY
THE FATE OF LOTTE AND HEINZ’S CHILDREN
Immediately after the end of World War II and the liberation, Lotte and Heinz decided to leave the traumatized Central Europe forever. Both twins emigrated to Great Britain, where they changed their names and tried to start a completely new life far from the shadows of Nazism and the emerging communism in Czechoslovakia. Heinz took the name Henry Fisher.
Oskar Fischer’s children lived in anonymity for many decades. A fundamental turning point came at the turn of the millennium. It was then that Fischer’s original scientific works and medical notes were found in the archives of Charles University. Historians and neurologists subsequently contacted his adult son Henry in England, who provided them with family photographs and personal memories, thanks to which Fischer’s groundbreaking discovery could be definitively rehabilitated before the whole world after almost a century.
THIRD STORY
LEO KOSÁK
We cannot forget the story of Leo Kosák, who joined forces with his cousin Oskar Fischer at the beginning of the 20th century. Leo Kosák was not only a talented doctor, but also a capable organizer. Under his and Fischer’s leadership, Veleslavín became synonymous with modern, humane care in a luxurious and peaceful environment in the middle of a large forest park. The turning point came with March 1939 and the Nazi occupation.
Like Fischer, he found himself in danger because of his Jewish origin. The Nazis were not only interested in liquidating the Jewish population, but they also desperately wanted their property. The modern and prosperous Veleslavín sanatorium was too tempting for the occupiers. In the summer of 1941, the Gestapo struck. Leo Kosák was arrested together with Oskar Fischer and thrown into a cell. Brutal psychological and physical pressure followed. The goal was one and only, to force them to sign a contract to sell the sanatorium for a fraction of the price. Kosák, exposed to threats and violence, had to watch as his life’s work fell into the hands of the Nazis.
After his release from the Gestapo prison, Kosák was deprived of the opportunity to practice his profession and own property. He soon suffered another serious blow. His cousin and lifelong companion Oskar was deported to Terezín, and Leo was left alone in occupied Prague, deprived of everything, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the Nazis would come for him too.
The day of reckoning came just before Christmas, on December 22, 1942. At that time, sixty-eight-year-old Leo had to board a transport marked Ck. The destination was the Terezín ghetto. Kosák spent almost two years in the overcrowded Terezín. As an elderly doctor, he had to deal with catastrophic hygienic conditions, hunger and constant fear of what would come next. Nevertheless, he tried to help other prisoners who shared the same fate as much as possible.
In the autumn of 1944, the Nazis decided to radically liquidate the Terezín ghetto. Mass transports to the east began, with the aim of exterminating the remaining Jews. On October 28, 1944, the anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, the state that Leo Kosák had served his entire life, the then seventy-year-old doctor was forced to board the Ev transport. The train was headed for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The old, exhausted doctor had no chance of passing the Nazi selection at the Auschwitz ramp. Leo Kosák died in the gas chamber shortly after his arrival.
FAMOUS CLIENTS AT THE SANATORIUM
Veleslavín Castle provided patients with top-notch care and a peaceful environment. Artists, intellectuals and politicians from all over Europe also came to Veleslavín. The atmosphere of the sanatorium was exceptional. It combined top-notch medicine, a discreet environment and the peace of the castle park. Even the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who was a guest of the then owners of the premises and sought inspiration and relaxation here, visited here repeatedly.
FOURTH STORY
CHARLOTTA MASARYK AND HER ISOLATION FROM SEVERE DEPRESSION
Among the most important clients was, for example, the wife of President T. G. Masaryk, Charlotta. Charlotta Garrigue Masaryková’s stay in Veleslavín in Prague is one of the most emotional and difficult chapters of her life. It is related to her serious mental and physical collapse at the end of World War I. Her health condition was the result of three years of cruel hardship during World War I. Her husband T. G. Masaryk was in exile and the Austrian authorities sentenced him to death for high treason. Charlotta remained in Prague completely cut off from financial resources. She was under constant pressure from police interrogations and bullying. Her daughter Alice was arrested and imprisoned in Vienna, and her son Herbert died of typhus in 1915.
This combination of isolation, fear for her family, and poverty led to the development of severe depression and heart weakness. In May 1918, her condition was so critical that she was deprived of her legal status and transported to Veleslavín.
It was in Veleslavín that Charlotta lived October 28, 1918. While the streets of Prague were bustling with celebrations of the establishment of an independent Czechoslovakia, the first lady of the new state lay seriously ill in a sanatorium. Here, her son Jan Masaryk also visited her for the first time after four years of separation. T. G. Masaryk himself rushed to see her at the Veleslavín sanatorium immediately after his triumphant return to his homeland on December 21, 1918. He brought her a bouquet of red roses as a gift. He even had a work office in the castle and often visited his wife there.
Medical care at Veleslavín and the joy of the end of the war and the restoration of her family helped Charlotta partially recover. She was able to leave the sanatorium in February 1919, when she moved to Prague Castle. However, her health remained permanently impaired.
She stayed in Veleslavín repeatedly, always for several weeks or months, to find peace outside the center of Prague.
FIFTH STORY
MILENA JESENSKÁ AND HER MORAL MADNESS
Writer and journalist Milena Jesenská was interned in a private sanatorium in 1917–1918 for alleged “moral insanity.” This diagnosis was somewhat abused by her father, a professor of dentistry, Jan Jesenský, who did not approve of her relationship with the Jewish writer Ernst Pollak and her overall lifestyle. In reality, it was not a real mental illness. The father had his daughter locked up in a psychiatric hospital under the pretext of financial irresponsibility (spending money) and an “immoral” love affair. During her adolescence, Milena lived a very wild, bohemian life and experimented with drugs, especially cocaine at the time. To finance her excesses, she sometimes stole family valuables or money.
The immediate trigger, however, was a dramatic moment in the spring of 1917, when Milena became pregnant with Pollak, attempted an abortion, and her father saved her life with timely intervention. Shortly after, he had her transferred to a sanatorium by order of her father. Her treatment focused on two main problems: drug addiction treatment and psychiatric diagnosis. The main part of the regime was forced, strictly controlled detoxification (so-called withdrawal treatment) without access to any opiates. The medicine of the time viewed her rebellion, free-thinking and non-conformist behavior as a mental disorder. Doctors officially stated in her medical record a “morbid lack of moral concepts and inhibitions”. Milena was under constant supervision by nurses. She refused to submit. The documents show that she continued to show rebellion in the sanatorium.
She spent a total of nine months in the sanatorium. Although she was released only in 1918, after reaching the age of majority, at the age of 21, her father’s plan to “re-educate” her completely failed. Immediately after her release, she returned to Polack, married him against her family’s wishes, and together they went to live in Vienna.
In Veleslavín, morphine was used as her father’s official excuse (theft in the doctor’s office), but she did not undergo actual treatment for severe addiction to this substance until many years later in a completely different place. Milena Jesenská’s true, deep, and devastating addiction to morphine broke out only after 1928. After the difficult birth of her daughter Jana, during which she also broke her leg, she fell ill with a serious form of rheumatism and suffered from unbearable pain. As a doctor’s daughter, she knew what worked for pain and began using morphine, which she developed a strong addiction to. She was only able to get rid of this severe addiction, which was destroying her marriage and career, in 1938 after a treatment stay. However, this did not take place in Veleslavín, but in a psychiatric hospital in Bohnice.
SIXTH STORY
ADOLF LOOS AND HIS TREATMENT OF SYPHILIS
The world-famous architect Adolf Loos was treated for syphilis and nervous exhaustion in a private sanatorium. He was treated there for a long time during the last years of his life. This insidious venereal disease fundamentally influenced his entire life and accompanied him from early youth. Loos probably became infected during his student years or during a three-year stay in the United States of America from 1893 to 1896. Due to syphilis, Adolf Loos remained sterile. This was also the main reason why none of his three marriages ended in the birth of children. In addition, the disease gradually caused him severe hearing loss, which developed into almost complete deafness towards the end of his life.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Loos was lucky. Although penicillin was not yet available to medicine at the time, thanks to a combination of advanced methods at the time, he was able to successfully cure himself of the disease in a Prague sanatorium. Fischer developed and successfully applied his own protein preparation called phlogetan. It was used to artificially induce fever, which at that time (before the discovery of antibiotics) was demonstrably able to suppress and treat the advanced stage of syphilis (progressive paralysis).
THE FATE OF THE CASTLE AFTER THE WAR
After the war, the castle continued to serve the health service. A pneumology clinic and other medical facilities operated on the premises. Although the building is a cultural monument, it fell into disrepair for many years and remained practically inaccessible to the public. Only in recent years has there been talk of its restoration.
Today, Veleslavín Castle is coming back to life. Guided tours, cultural events, concerts and neighborhood meetings are held here. The area is gradually turning into a lively community place and more and more people are discovering its unique charm. It is the contrast between the faded elegance of Baroque architecture and the dramatic history that gives the castle its unique atmosphere.
If you are looking for a lesser-known trip around Prague that offers history, architecture and powerful stories, Veleslavín Castle is definitely worth a visit. It is not just another historical building. It is a place where the destinies of important personalities, medical discoveries and the history of the entire country intersect. And perhaps that is why Veleslavín seems so authentic and a little mysterious even today.
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Hi Sylva,
A friend sent me the article on Veleslavin. I live just a couple of hundred metres from the zámek and I found your story very interesting and informative. You have a brilliant way with words and you obviously enjoy what you experience and write about very much. I am also involved with the Wild Geese Historical Society of Czechia and one of the historical events we commemorated was the Battle of Prague in 1757, because of course Frederik the Great, in his attack on Prague was opposed by one of our earlier Wild Geese, Ulysses Maximilian Browne! Frederik did actually stay in Veleslavin (spelt Weleslavin in maps of the time) and his route to meet up with his cavalry stationed in Brevnov monastery still survives! A report on a walk we undertook a couple of years ago to retrace his footsteps (or rather horse hooves) is on our website wildgeese.cz which you may find interesting. So much more I could add but space is limited. I will, of course, follow your other explorations. Masaryk also used to visit his wife in the sanatorium on horseback. All the best, Sean
Hi Sean, thank you very much for your great post. I was very pleased by your words about my writing. The information about Frederick the Great and Ulysses Browne is absolutely amazing. I would love to check out your website wildgeese.cz. The route between Veleslavín and Břevnov sounds like a great tip for further exploration. I was also very interested in the interesting fact about Masaryk on horseback. It is great to have a neighbor so close who shares the enthusiasm for history. Let’s definitely stay in touch. Good luck, Sylva
Fascinating article – thanks for sharing! So sad to read of the fate of both the doctors who sought to bring peace and healing to others… I’m looking forward to reading your other articles!
Thank you for the kind words! It’s deeply moving to reflect on those who dedicate their lives to helping others, only to face tragic circumstances.