On 5 February 2025, a Russian drone strike damaged a architectural landmark in Kharkiv located at Heroes of Kharkiv Avenue, 145.

This is the former Maternity Hospital No. 2, built in 1901–1902 to a design by engineer Vadym Kolyanovsky in collaboration with engineer D. Denisov, in an eclectic style. In 2002, it was named after Maximilian Helfferich, who “built it at his own expense and donated it to Kharkiv”, as noted on the commemorative plaque on the building.

It is worth noting that other Kharkiv residents also donated significant sums to the hospital, such as mining engineer Stepan Mantsiarli, known for his work on the development of salt and coal deposits in the Donbas. Originally, the “Women’s Aid” hospital was named after Maximilian’s wife, Josephine, who died in 1894. Maximilian Helfferich also did not live to see the building’s opening, having died in 1901.

The couple had no children; perhaps this is why Kharkiv’s most prominent philanthropist and owner of the city’s largest factory (which produced agricultural machinery) wished to help other women by establishing such a facility.

The staff consisted exclusively of women; the director, Elizaveta Drenteln, and the assistant doctors lived on the hospital premises.

Visits to doctors were free of charge; for the poorest, inpatient care was also free, and it was possible to call for a carriage for women in labour or for midwives’ assistance with home births. The hospital also housed a school for midwives with a chemistry and microscopy laboratory. Unfortunately, despite its normal external appearance, the internal condition of the maternity hospital was already unsatisfactory by the 2010s, and it was closed even before the full-scale invasion (although the antenatal clinic remained open until the summer of 2024).