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Erich Küter * 1908

Große Freiheit 92 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Pauli)

KZ Sachsenhausen
ermordet 04.12.1941

Erich Willi Franz Küter, born 15 Aug. 1908, prison sentences in 1927, 1934, 1935, 1939, died 4 Dec. 1941 in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

Große Freiheit 92

Erich Küter was born in Polzin near Belgard in Eastern Pomerania (today Poland) in 1908, the youngest of the 23 children of his parents Emilie (Weinland) and Fred Küter. His mother died in 1917, and his father, a fish and horse trader, one year later. From the age of six until he was 14 he attended the school for children with learning disabilities in Polzin, after which he worked as a farmhand. By 1927 he was living in Hamburg and Altona, where he worked as a marble polisher and excavator. He married in 1931, but divorced in 1933 on grounds of adultery by both partners. At the time of his last arrest in 1939 he was working as a manual laborer at the Altona Crate Factory.

On 5 June 1934 he was sentenced to six weeks in prison for public indecency. While he was in prison it was discovered that he had engaged in sexual activities with his room-mate and with two other men. As a result, the court sentenced him to seven months in prison on charges of homosexuality.

On 27 March 1939, Erich Küter once again became a victim of the persecution of homosexuals. He had met a man in "Monte Carlo” in St. Pauli, an establishment known to cater to homosexuals. They returned to Küter’s apartment at Große Freiheit 92 and had sex. The next morning the man went to the police and reported Küster with the following statement: "It was not my intention to have sexual relations with the man, but rather to trap him and turn him over to the police.”

His argument did not convince the court. On 31 March 1939 at 6 a.m., Erich Küter was arrested at his home and taken into "protective custody” at the Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp. He was transferred to the Hamburg City pre-trial detention center on 6 April 1939. Dr. Frommer, the psychiatrist in the pre-trial detention center infirmary, recommended that he remain in custody, calling Küter "a mildly feeble-minded, morally inferior person.”

After interviewing Küter’s siblings, the District Attorney’s Office investigators submitted the following testimony: "Ever since childhood, there was nothing boyish about him, he was more like a girl. He liked to wear girls’ clothing and played with girls. … After the death of his parents, Küter lived with his eldest brother’s family. His brother and sister-in-law had no sympathy with this effete person. They first tried to be strict and tough with him to raise him to be a proper boy, but when they realized that their measures would have no success, they became resigned and finally considered him to be an annoyance. … Beginning in [1929] … the Welfare Office records state that Küter was often seen on the street in women’s clothing and that it was suspected that he was a rent-boy [until his imprisonment in 1935, Küter allegedly wore women’s clothing in public] … One quickly recognizes Küter as a deviant, inferior person. He is hard-of-hearing, feeble-minded, and peculiar, with his strange ways and his squeaky voice.”

Küter’s landlord cleared out his apartment while he was in pre-trial detention.
On 24 August 1939 the 5th Chamber (Chamber for the Protection of Minors) of the Hamburg Regional Court pronounced its verdict. Erich Küter was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The judge also recommended that he submit to "voluntary castration.”

Erich Küter served his sentence in the Fuhlsbüttel prison and in the Glasmoor prison near Glashütte. Two pleas for pardon were unsuccessful. His sentence ended on 28 October 1940 – Küter was released into the custody of the Hamburg police and probably sent directly to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, where he was murdered on 4 December 1941.

Translator: Amy Lee

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Bernhard Rosenkranz/Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung, Abl. 2, 451 a E 1, 1 d; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 6660/39; StaH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Abl. 13 und 16.; Müller/Sternweiler, Homosexuelle Männer, 2000, S. 20.