At the end of 1942, the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior decreed that patients »without any appreciable work performance« were to receive worse care. This was radically put into practice in the Eglfing-Haar institution near Munich. The director of the institution, Hermann Pfannmüller, set up two »hunger houses«. He regularly checked the weight of the patients and the menus. In individual cases, Pfannmüller ordered them to be given sedatives to hasten their death. From January 1943 to June 1945, more than 440 patients died of the consequences of the deliberate lack of food in these »hunger houses«.