SPIEGEL bestselling author Corina Bomann is working on a novel series about the Adventist hospital Waldfriede, in Berlin-Zehlendorf. The series is entitled Die Schwestern vom Waldfriede (The Sisters of Waldfriede) and tells episodes from the history of this medical institution founded in 1920. The first volume, entitled Sternstunde, was recently published by Penguin and immediately made it to the bestseller list of DER SPIEGEL magazine.
The Berlin writer, Corina Bomann (known for the novel series Die Farben der Schönheit, Ullstein-Verlag, also a SPIEGEL bestseller), spent ten days in the Waldfriede hospital in autumn 2019 due to an operation. She wrote about her stay: "There, they gave me hope for a good recovery from the start, and thanks to capable doctors and loving nurses I got back on my feet."
Chronicle of nurse Hanna Rinder served as a model
During her stay at the hospital, she discovered historical photos depicting the medical staff as well as historical utensils, for example, sewn-together bed sheets from the time shortly after the Second World War, which were displayed in a glass case there. This aroused her interest in the history of the hospital, and she contacted the hospital management, who then sent her the chronicle of the nurse, Hanna Rinder. She had worked at Waldfriede from its founding in 1920 until her retirement in 1956. In her chronicle, Hanna Rinder described many adventures of the doctors, nurses, and orderlies; she reported on weddings and deaths, on joy, hardship, and sorrow. "Thirty years full of fate, emotion, longings and love. The idea for my new saga was born," says Corina Bomann. This is how "Nurse Hanna" became the protagonist of the novel series; based on her experiences, it tells the birth and further history of Waldfriede Hospital. Novels about hospitals often attract a lot of attention, as Ulrike Schweikert's series about the Charité hospital, in Berlin, has shown.
First Adventist institution to be honoured in a series of novels
"Of all Adventist institutions worldwide, our hospital is the only one whose history is being published in a four-part novel on the occasion of its 100th anniversary," says Bernd Quoß, president of the Waldfriede Hospital Board.
The other volumes of the novel series Die Schwestern vom Waldfriede are entitled Leuchtfeuer, Sturmtage, and Wunderzeit. They will be published by Penguin until mid-2023, each as a paperback, e-book, and audio book.
Waldfriede Hospital
The non-profit hospital, Waldfriede, is located in the Berlin district of Zehlendorf and is an academic teaching hospital of the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin. It has been certified several times according to statutory quality parameters and has already received numerous awards for its medical and nursing quality. About 15,000 inpatients and 120,000 outpatients are treated here every year. The supporting organization is the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which maintains about 900 medical facilities worldwide. Waldfriede is, among other things, a member of the Diakonisches Werk Berlin-Brandenburg-schlesische Oberlausitz, the Deutscher Evangelischer Krankenhausverband e.V. (German Protestant Hospital Association – DEKV), and a cooperation partner of the Adventist hospital network, Advent Health, in the USA.
The hospital is part of the Waldfriede Health Network, which also includes a day clinic, a social station, an academy for health and nursing care, a service company, a senior citizens' home, the PrimaVita health centre, the Nikolassee private clinic and the Desert Flower Center.
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