Sonnenstein Asylum

Sonnenstein asylum opened in 1811 in a disused fortress on a hill in the city of Pirna. It admitted all those patients from the old asylum at Waldheim that were considered curable leaving incurables at Waldheim. Due to the work of its first superintendent, E.G. Pienitz, Sonnenstein soon became a model for the reform of psychiatry in German-speaking countries. In 1856 the institution was extended by the construction of new pavilions, built to specifications that reflected contemporary psychiatric thought.