Mandshjemmet at Brejning

Facts

Perfect site for treating mental deficiency

By Inger-Marie Børgesen, Museumsleder, etnolog (22 stories)

Mandshjemmet, the Men's Home" in Brejning near Fredericia is from 1899 and was the first building in a large residential complex for "the mentally deficient", called De Kellerske Aandssvage-Anstalter. The inmates behind the white walls by the sea were able-bodied men with developmental disabilities. Dr. Christian Keller campaigned like his father – Johan Keller – before him for the mentally deficient to enjoy a bearable existence and opportunities for developing to the best of their ability through education and occupational therapy. With a government grant, Christian Keller consolidated his father's many activities at Brejning. The differing gradients in the surrounding landscape complemented Keller's principle that people with developmental disabilities should be segregated by gender, age, intelligence and capacity for work. "

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Man tethered in field

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Story written by Inger-Marie Børgesen

Time / Periode 1899

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Dr. Christian Keller was much taken up with advances in the treatment of people with developmental disabilities. In an interview, he recounted the miserable fate of one man: I once received a man who was bound hand and foot with a bit in his mouth. For years, he had been kept tethered in a field by his home. (…) He was quite vicious. (…) Not until he tore all the hair from his mother's head in a fit of rage did she feel it was beyond her ability to care for him. But she thought an asylum was tantamount to a prison. The district medical officer to whom I wrote and complained, replied that he had neither a duty nor the right to intervene. Which was true enough – in those days". "