Augusta Victoria is a multi-part campus Mount Scopus in East Jerusalem, including the original church itself, the portions of the original pilgrim housing (now converted into the modern, 161-bed hospital), several dozens of acres of olive trees, the rectory of the pastor of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem, and finally both the administrative offices and living quarters of the Lutheran World Federation - Jerusalem offices. It is primarily financed by the Lutheran World Federation and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
During the time of Jesus, the piece of land upon which the hospital now stands was the location of the headquarters of the Roman X Legion (or in Latin Legio X Fretensis). Any Roman soldiers that may have been present in the stories of the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament came from this base, and their presence there is still discernible: as of July 2009, Roman coins are still being found in the soil during small construction and maintenance projects.[]
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.
After the Kaiser's visit, he commissioned the construction of a guesthouse for German pilgrims. Many of the building materials were imported from Germany. A 50-meter high church tower was constructed with four bells, the largest of them weighing six tons. To transport these bells from Jaffa, the road to Jerusalem had to be widened and paved. The expense was more than double the cost of transporting the bells from Hamburg to Jaffa. Augusta Victoria was the first building in the country to have electricity (provided by a diesel generator).
From 1920 to 1927, Augusta Victoria was the official residence of the British High Commissioner of the Palestine Mandate before British headquarters moved to Armon Hanatziv, on the outskirts of Talpiot. Under Jordanian administration, technically under UN control, it was a military hospital for soldiers from the Arab Legion. In 1927, a severe earthquake caused extensive damage to the premises.
The Nazi party held meetings and assemblies at Augusta Victoria under the leadership of Ludwig Buchhalter, a Templer living in the Germany Colony who was appointed head of Jerusalem branch of the Nazi party in 1933.[] In the mid-1930s, when the building was about to reopen as a hostel run by Deaconesses, the management decided to bar Jewish guests to preserve the institution's Christian character.[]
After World War II, the second floor of the hospital was used by Winston Churchill as his office while he decided how to split up the Trans-Jordan, resulting in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Mandate of Palestine. The chair he used is still kept in the house of the head pastor of the Augusta Victoria campus, across the street, as of July 2009.[]
In the Six-Day War of 1967, the campus was under the control of the Jordanian military and was fortified with several bunkers. While most of them were utterly destroyed and left behind no trace, one of the bunkers was blown-out, and the ruins were left behind as the fighting intensified in other parts of Jerusalem.[]
Augusta Victoria is now the second-largest hospital in East Jerusalem, as well as being the sole remaining specialized-care hospital located in the West Bank or Gaza. It also operates a guesthouse run by the Lutheran World Federation for international volunteers and guests. A pediatric oncology ward for Palestinian children opened in April 2005 in a joint project with the Peres Center for Peace, various Italian foundations and the Hadassah University Hospital in West Jerusalem, which trained the oncologist and nursing staff.