“At the suggestion of Dr. Wiegand1 in Bendorf, I decided in 1870 to admit Israelite nervous and mentally ill patients to my house in Sayn and to treat and care for them here according to medical instructions,” wrote Meier Jacoby (1818-1890) in his first “Report on the effectiveness of the private sanatorium and nursing home for Israelite nervous and mentally ill patients… at Sayn near Coblenz”. In an advertisement in the “Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums” from 18692 , the doctor of the institution and the caretaker, rabbinical candidate Berg, are named as the persons to whom applications for the institution to be built should be addressed.
When the aforementioned house became too small, Jacoby acquired “a building situated between Sayn and Bendorf and surrounded by a large garden “3 Until now, we were of the opinion that the institution was only founded after the move from Mittelgasse (now no. 7) to what is now Koblenz-Olper-Straße. Only knowledge of the report from 1877 provided clarity here, as the term “Flecken Sayn” used there by Meier Jacoby means Alt-Sayn*. It is also possible that Jacoby moved to Engerser Landstraße (No. 3) during the founding phase, as this house is described as a rented house in an audit report dated December 14, 1872 and it is mentioned that the move was planned “to a newly constructed house on Berliner Straße (Koblenz-Olper-Straße)”. The report refers to Meier Jacoby as a teacher born in Mogendorf. According to oral tradition, he had run a butcher’s shop in Mittelgasse. Meier Jacoby had come to Sayn from Mogendorf/Ww. around 1850, initially worked as a butcher and taught Jewish children on the side. He may have been a cantor or taught in the synagogue community of Bendorf and Sayn.
He may have held the office of cantor or Jewish religious teacher on a part-time basis. So we are not surprised that Meier Jacoby himself led the services in his institution. From time to time a rabbi came to give lectures.
Jacoby’s institution was founded 21 years later than Dr. Erlenmeyer’s and 13 years after Dr. Brosius’ institution. Meier Jacoby said the following about his motives for founding the institution: “Frequent contact with the relatives of the Israelite mental patients in the institutions in neighboring Bendorf and with the patients themselves awakened in me the decision to establish an asylum for the mentally ill of the Israelite religion, where the patients would receive ritual food and could observe their customs uninhibitedly. I had often heard that the patients, who had grown up in strictly Jewish homes, were reluctant to eat non-kosher food, that they refused such food altogether or believed themselves to be sinning by eating it, that they were mocked and teased by less educated patients and guards because of their faith, and so on. – Circumstances that must certainly have an unfavorable influence on the mentally ill. “9
When Dr. Wiegand left Bendorf in 1874, Jacoby appointed the Jewish physician Dr. Salomon Behrendt (1846-1912) as his successor.
In the first few years after its foundation, there were only a few patients because the premises did not offer much space and because the new facility was not yet well known. Between 1871 and 1876, 15 men and 12 women were admitted. However, we know nothing about their length of stay.’° In 1886 and 1887, 83 patients were newly admitted, 65 of whom were from Germany, 13 from the Netherlands, 2 from England, 2 from Russia and 1 from Austria. Of the 156 new patients admitted in the years 1890 to 1893, 124 came from Germany, 16 from the Netherlands, 5 from England, 4 from Austria-Hungary, 3 each from Russia and Belgium, and one from Switzerland.
The following forms of illness were reported for these 156 patients:
I Simple mental disorder: 110 (66 women, 44 men)
II Paralytic mental disorder: 9 (1 woman, 8 men)
III Mental disorder with epilepsy: 7 (3 women, 4 men)
IV. Imbecility and idiocy: 30 (13 women, 17 men).
The persons mentioned under IV. also included 4 boys and 2 girls who were accommodated in the children’s section of the institution. This was located outside the grounds of the institution, but in its immediate vicinity (today’s house number 31).” In an audit report by the Koblenz district government’s medical department in 1885, 14 “children” are named, but their ages are given as “between 6 and 19 years”. The first admission took place in 1882’2
Bentheim, a young Jewish teacher, had taught the children, who made a relatively favorable impression. They had given short, correct and clear answers to individual questions from biblical history. 13
The report on the inspections carried out on August 14/15 and October 15, 1888 states that the children’s ward, elsewhere called the ward for idiotic children, had 14 possible places. At this time, only 9 children were admitted, who were looked after by two attendants. The teacher lived in a room within the department. The children’s section had its own school hall and a spacious playground. At times, the classes were also attended by a few quiet male patients who were diagnosed with “congenital imbecility “4. As early as 1848, Albrecht Erlenmeyer added a separate department to his Bendorf institution for children and young people who were retarded in their mental development. He believed “that individual idiots could be cured, i.e. brought to civic independence”. Is Erlenmeyer described idiocy as a disease that could be cured if patients were helped to adopt a healthy lifestyle with a proper, balanced diet, including mineral-rich drinking water. In addition, gymnastic training and structural conditions that made it possible to live like a family were needed. Jacoby certainly based the formation of small groups of patients on Erlenmeyer’s arguments against overly large institutional complexes and “mass care”. 16
The children’s department did not last long. The “Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums” wrote about the reasons for this in its supplement “Der Gemeindebote” on July 8, 1894: “The institution also has a children’s department, but this has so far only brought financial disadvantages. Most of the applications for admission come from poor people who, as a result of their employment, would like to place a mentally and physically retarded child in an institution, while better-off families keep their idiot child at home and are able to give it a special room and its own guardian. “17
The children’s department was soon closed; the handbook article from 191318 no longer mentions it. However, the funding problems were soon to become apparent in the other departments as well.
Despite, or perhaps because of, tight daily rates, the lavish “Kurhaus für Nervöse” (spa house for nervous patients) was built on Koblenz-Olper-Straße in 1898/99 in order to attract more affluent patients. Also in 1899, the Erlenmeyer’sche Anstalten underwent a considerable expansion of the grounds with conversions and new buildings. The institutions in the center of Bendorf and Waldesruhe in the Wenigerbachtal valley were completely rebuilt and equipped with new bathing facilities and air heating. The large, luxurious-looking Brosius’sche Villa Sayn was intended for only 6-8 ladies, especially for vacation stays for nervous girls who were still attending school,’* daughters from wealthy families. The Colmant Institutions advertised their “Villa Flora” in 1905 with the words that the new castle-like building in an open, healthiest location, in the middle of parks, flower and fruit gardens and with a magnificent view of the Rhine valley and the beautiful surroundings was only intended for ladies of the better classes with nervous and mental illnesses2º Thus the private sanatoriums had in common that the higher care rates were included in a mixed calculation with the lower ones.