Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 18-19. (Budapest, 2000)

Semmelweis's Birthplace - the Home of the Museum

Three r¡zal¡ts — one in the middle and two on both sides — give plasticity to the one-storey building with their 2+3+3+3+2 windows. They arc broken up by pilasters ending in double consols which connect the ground floor and the second floor. Between the pilasters there is a row of protuberant festoon decoration in the main cornice, echoed by other festoons underneath the windows. The simple sideview looking onto Sándor-lcpcső (Sándor stairs) is broken up by windows to give the wall a more animated effect. On the other side, looking onto the Szarvas-House a partition wall is waiting another attaching building. Considering the surroundings, the magnificent view up to Royal Castle, the future building needs proper and careful design. The birthplace The birthplace of Ignác Semmelweis was never owned by the Semmelweis family as it is stated in several Semmelweis monographs. This is why the question arose whether the building considered as the birthplace of Semmelweis could be connected to the Semmelweis family at all and whether this familiar and generally known belief is justified or not. On the basis of the Grundbuch Conscription preserved in the Budapest Municipal Archives we can surely state that between 1814 and 1844 the house was owned by János Meinđl, a wealthy tradesman and respected burgher of Buda. Between 1844 and 1852 it had been entered under the name of Lőrinc Jankovits and afterwards it was owned by Leo Schallinger and his successors. In 1906 when the Semmelweis memorial plaque was placed on the house its landlord was Márton Wolf, a greengrocer. The registers of Tabán in the section of the Buda Archives (kept in the Budapest Municipal Archives as well) reveal the name of the owners and the tenants of the Meinđ House, (that is to say this building) between 1805 and 1830. József Semmelweis, the father of Ignác F. Semmelweis lived here with his companion Simon Gerhard in 1809, before the great fire, as a young bachelor. He stayed here even after he had married in 1810 which coincided with the year of the great Tabán fire. In the conscriptions of 1815 the Semmelweis family is entered with indicating the three elder sons (József, Károly, Fülöp), and the servants. In 1817 the registers already recorded Julianna Semmelweis and in 1819 and 1821 the would-be physician Ignác Semmelweis. (In 1821 he is entered with his two younger brothers, János and Ágoston). At these conscriptions the actual age of the persons had been asked and the date of birth was calculated accordingly, hence divergencies easily occured. The number of tenants also points that during the reconstructions after 1810 the house was enlarged and the number of its occupants increased to 38, from the earlier 23. Apart from the tenants, the Semmelweis family, and the landlord's family 12