[The municipality hospital at Nuremberg after the end of reconstruction (1958-1994)]

In 1897 the municipality of Nuremberg founded a large hospital in the northern part of the town. That hospital was partly destroyed by air-attacks in World War II but rebuilt rather quickly after 1945, and in 1958 it owned the same capacities, as far as hospital-beds were concerned, as before the war (1939). The older buildings of that hospital were modernized after 1960, and many new ones with much better facilities for the in-patients were added. After the war Nuremberg's population grew but slowly from 430,000 (1958) to roughly half a million after 1971. But people grew older, many spent some time in hospital. In the 1960s, the length of stay in this hospital was considerable, 25.8 days (1962) on the average. From then on it decreased to less than to days in the 1990s. The progress of medicine as an applied science was extraordinary in those decades, the therapies became more intensive--and more costly--, and many more doctors and nurses had to take care of more older and sicker patients. In 1994 a second big municipal hospital was founded, this time in the utmost south of Nuremberg. Some 1000 hospital beds were transferred from the old hospital in the north to the new one in the south and a little less than 1500 beds remained behind.