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© Staatsarchiv Hamburg
Carl Sievers * 1921
Kastanienweg 5 (Wandsbek, Bergstedt)
Tötungsanstalt
Meseritz-Obrawalde
ermordet 17.08.1944
Carl Theodor Christian Sievers, born on 16 May 1921 in Hamburg, imprisoned in 1941, murdered on 17 Aug. 1944 in the Meseritz-Obrawalde euthanasia killing center
Kastanienweg 5
Carl Sievers was born on 16 May 1921 in Hamburg as the son of the crane operator Johannes Sievers and the nurse Luise Sievers, née Froehling. He had three older siblings, Herbert, Elise, and Johanna.
The boy, characterized in a 1935 medical report as "clumsy, awkwardly autistic,” attended the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule) and apparently he was "teased very often by his schoolmates.” Even as a child, he "locked himself up and did not play with other children.”
In Aug. 1934, at the age of 13, Carl Sievers fell ill for the first time with schizophrenia, "talking incoherent drivel” and "not being able to string two sentences together properly.” He was admitted to Eppendorf General Hospital for a month. In Aug. 1935, his parents admitted him to hospital a second time, in this case to the Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” (Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Langenhorn), where he was diagnosed with the same condition. At his parents’ request, he was discharged again in October because they deemed him "restored to health;” however, due to his listlessness, he was no longer able to finish his compulsory education. After his confirmation in Apr. 1936, he was sterilized in the Harbor Hospital based on an application from Langenhorn. Carl Sievers became a member of the Hitler Youth, though he stayed away from the meetings after being enlisted there for target practice, since everything connected to war caused fear in him. These emotions intensified following the first air raid alert in Hamburg in 1940.
From early May 1936 until June 1940, Carl Sievers had about 40 different jobs as a messenger, junior farmhand, and unskilled laborer. In the very end, the Hamburg employment office enlisted him for labor at Mecklenburgische Metallwarenfabrik m.b.H. Waren, "Memefa,” in Waren/Müritz, a metalware plant, for half a year, though after four months, he was sent home as unsuitable. Repeatedly, he had been humiliated, beaten, and eventually dismissed by employers due to his "low level of apprehension,” something he often concealed from his parents out of shame. In June 1940, he was at Langenhorn for the second time on a diagnosis of schizophrenia, remaining there for a month. That same year, proceedings on charges of theft were pending, though they were suspended in Jan. 1941. At this time, he worked as an auxiliary postal employee at Post Office 20 on Eppendorfer Landstrasse.
On 24 Mar. 1941, Carl Sievers was arrested directly from work on Curschmannstrasse by the police, because a local group leader of the Nazi party suspected him of having performed indecent acts on children. One day later, Sievers was taken to the pretrial detention facility on Holstenglacis, interrogated by the criminal investigation department, and indicted by the public prosecutor’s office in accordance with Secs. 175 and 176 Item 3 of the Reich Criminal Code. He confessed to having performed indecent acts on two boys younger than 14 years by luring them into a staircase, preventing them from running away, and touching them on their trousers close to their genitalia. An expert’s report by the medical officer (Medizinalrat) and forensic pathologist Dr. Wilhelm Reuss sealed Carl Sievers’ fate in May 1941 by recommending committal to Langenhorn in accordance with Sec. 42b of the Reich Criminal Code "at least for the duration of the war;” on 11 June 1941, Sievers was transferred there from pretrial detention. The Regional Court (Landgericht) confirmed in its verdict dating from Sept. 1941 the defendant’s mental incapacity concerning the deed according to Sec. 51 Par. 1 of the Reich Criminal Code, ordering committal to a mental asylum and nursing home for three years to begin with, instead of an extended jail or penitentiary sentence.
The meager notes on the medical history do not reveal whether in fact no improvement of Carl Sievers’ state of health could be observed. Following the death of his father in Aug. 1941, he asked for leave at Easter of 1942 in order to enable him to support his mother with gardening work. He formulated this request flawlessly. It was turned down just the same as an application he had submitted toward his discharge at the end of Sept. 1942. Instead he was, like many of his fellow sufferers, transported "uncured” to the Meseritz-Obrawalde euthanasia killing center in Brandenburg on 25 Mar. 1943 "in the course of a general transfer operation.”
As late as 18 July 1944, the provincial senior medical officer (Provinzialmedizinalrat) on location, Dr. Theophil Mootz, provided for the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office (Generalstaatsanwaltschaft) in Berlin, by then in charge of the case, the expert’s opinion that "in the case of the mental patient Carl S i e v e r s, the purpose of the committal … [can] not be considered achieved in light of his psychologically seriously and incurably changed mental state.” On 17 Aug. 1944, the mother was notified by means of a postcard that her son had died of "pneumonia” and that interment had been arranged on site.
As the historian Thomas Beddies established, Mootz was the physician "conducting the selections of the victims in Meseritz-Obrawalde, subsequently signing off on the supposed causes of death in the medical histories. The lethal injections were administered by a number of chosen female and male nurses on his instructions.” Reportedly, the doctor was arrested by Russian troops in 1945 and subsequently declared dead.
The Hamburg physician Wilhelm Reuss, however, though initially dismissed from public service by the British occupational force in 1945, was re-employed on 31 Jan. 1951 as the successor of the notorious expert witness on (not just) numerous homosexuals, Professor Dr. Hans Koopmann, and appointed head of the Forensic Service of the Hamburg Prison Authority. As late as 3 Mar. 1950, his reappointment to public service had been refused because he had been a member of the SA.
Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.
Stand: January 2019
© Bernhard Rosenkranz(†)/Ulf Bollmann
Quellen: StaH 352-8/7 (Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn), Ablieferung 1995/1 Nr. 22232; StaH 213-11 (Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen), 7635/41; StaH 242-1II (Gefängnisverwaltung II), Ablieferung 16; StaH 131-11 (Personalamt), 874; Bernhard Rosenkranz/Ulf Bollmann/Gottfried Lorenz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung in Hamburg 1919–1969, Hamburg 2009, S. 258; Thomas Beddies 2006, in: http://www.deathcamps.org/euthanasia/obrawalde_de.html (eingesehen am 5.1.2011).
