The other day, I went for a walk in the German state of Thuringia, not looking for anything specific, except to get away from work for a day.

When I was already completely lost, I spotted a little house in the forest.

Although I should have been warned by the gruesome tale of Hänsel and Gretel, curiosity got the better of me.

I approached carefully and silently, so as not to alert anybody. But soon after sneaking through the old gate, all the carefulness was for nothing, as I couldn’t hold back from a loud and heartfelt “Whoah!!” But it didn’t matter, for nobody was alive anymore.

I had stumbled upon the lost village of Tannenfeld.

It used to be a castle, and was later expanded into a sanatorium for people with addiction and other psychological issues. Once of the patients was Rudolf Ditzen, probably better known under his pseudonym Hans Fallada. He had to come here a few times, and in between he took up a job on a farm estate in nearby Polsterstein, which you can see from the clinic.

Actually, Tannenfeld is no longer completely a lost place. It’s officially open to the public, and they sometimes have events in the wonderful park. But as I was there in the middle of the week, I had the whole place to myself.

Those medical institutions from the turn of the 19th and 20th century are often quite fabulous places. Their generous park-like spaces are impressive enough, but even more so if you compare them with the squalid conditions that most people lived in at the time. And in many of these sanatoria, you can wander around freely, without a doctor committing you to the institution. Some more recommendations: The clinic in Berlin-Wuhlgarten. The institutions for the blind in Chemnitz. And of course Otto Wagner Hospital in Vienna.