Old City

Old City

View from the Bell tower of the Lutheran Church

Since 1950 the Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) has been a project of the Lutheran World Federation. It's main task has been to provide services for Palestinian Refugees in cooperation with UNRWA, the United Nations agency that has been responsible for the refugee-programs in the region since 1948. Today, the hospital continues to develop services for the Palestinian community, mostly on a charitable basis.

24 July 2009
Augusta Victoria is a 161-bed hospital on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, financed by the Lutheran World Federation and the United Nations Refugee Works Administration. Augusta Victoria was built in 1907 as a center for the German Protestant community in Ottoman Palestine. The complex, completed in 1910, included the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Ascension with a 65-meter belltower and a hospice for Christian pilgrims. During World War II, it was converted into a hospital by the British. The complex was named for Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein, wife of German Kaiser Wilhelm II, who visited Jerusalem in 1898. The architect, Robert Leibnitz, was inspired by German palaces, such as the German Hohenzollern.