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Wilhelm Nebelung * 1893

Hansaplatz 8 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

HIER WOHNTE
WILHELM NEBELUNG
JG. 1893
VERHAFTET 1936
MAUTHAUSEN
ERMORDET

Wilhelm Carl August Benedict Rupert Nebelung, b. 9.2.1893, imprisoned 1936, 1941, d. sometime after 7.16.1942, presumably in the Mauthausen concentration camp

Hansaplatz 8

Wilhelm Nebelung was born in Oldesloe (Bad Oldesloe from 1910 on), the son of the railroad secretary Carl Nebelung and Helene, née Mausharke, his wife. He had two brothers. He attended secondary school in Lübeck, and, then, intermediary school in Wandsbek. From his graduation in 1909 until the First World War, he worked in the office of the Lübeck-Büchener Railroad Company. During the war he served from 1915 until his wounding in 1918 in the 162nd Infantry Division. He received the Iron Cross Second Class and the Front Soldier’s Badge for meritorious service.

After his convalescence he returned briefly to his old workplace; then he worked as an office assistant in the construction department of the Hamburg Senate Commission (probably dealing with railroad matters). His father launched him on the path to become a career official, paying for his attendance at the Technical School of the Hamburg Association of Administrative Officials. However, Wilhelm Nebelung voluntarily left state service in 1920. He found a position with an insurance company. In 1921, the Munich District Court sentenced him to jail for fraud and the unauthorized using of the title of lieutenant. In 1923 and 1924 he stood before the court again, charged with "trading for foreign currency in exchange for Reich marks" and resisting state authority.

In 1926 Wilhelm Nebelung married the war widow, Dorothea Behr, née Stole, who since 1918 ran a pension on the fifth floor of the dwelling at Hansaplatz 8. Allegedly, because of the lack of steady guests, the two turned the pension into a sleazy hotel for prostitutes, homosexuals, and transvestites. In 1928, 1930, and 1931, Nebelung was fined for running an illegal public house, in other words, for "procuring."

On 24 June 1933, he registered his trade as "salesman, owner of an "automobile transport and rental business." At the horse market (today Gerhart-Hauptmann Place), he rented automobiles and trailers that were probably owned by his wife. In that year, the couple gave up the pension and opened a flophouse on the second floor of a six-room dwelling at Brandstwiete 6. On 24 November 1933, Wilhelm Nebelung once again stood before the district court charged with procuring; he was sentenced to nine months in jail. While he was imprisoned, his wife continued to run the pension business. In order to pay the monthly rent of 110 RM, she rented rooms to prostitutes for 2 RM per hour. Nonetheless back rent debts piled up.

After his release, Wilhelm Nebelung returned to his wife. The two moved from Brandstwiete to Hermannstrasse 5, second floor, where they once again opened a flophouse. Wilhelm Nebelung worked nearby as a hired driver for 50 to 60 RM per month for the Berverin firm at Gurlittstrasse 42.

In December 1936, Wilhelm Nebelung had to answer charges of same-sex activities before the District Court of Hamburg. Seven months earlier he fell victim to a neighborhood denunciation, along with his partner, Walther Nickels (born 15 April 1910 in Itzehoe, died 7 March 1943 in the Neuengamme concentration camp; a commemorative stone was laid in 2010 at Friedrichstrasse 55, in front of the St. Pauli day school).

The criminal police arrest report of 14 May 1936 states: "Confidential information has been received that homosexuals come to Nebelung’s flophouse at Hermannstrasse 51 ... Nebelung also has homosexual tendencies. He has relations with Walther (first name) who supposedly lives with him. Nebelung has relatives living outside the country to whom he brings money which he then later has sent back to him by post. He pretends to the officials who apprehended him that he is being supported by his relatives. Or he claims to have a car rental business. In reality, he does not own a car." Because the Nebelungs were deemed a flight risk, they were detained.

The officials’ criminal investigations also brought in the transvestite Paul Thieswald (born 1880 in Hamburg; died 1951 in Hamburg) because he regularly stored and changed his women’s clothing in the flophouse, paying 1 RM in rent. Because no engagement in homosexual activities could be proven, proceedings against him were dropped. The cross-examination of Dorothea Nebelung made clear that the homosexual inclinations of her husband were known to and tolerated by her.

On 2 December 1936, the judge convicted Wilhelm Nebelung of "unnatural acts and procuring," according to §175 and §180 of the Reich Penal Code, sentencing him to a year and nine months in jail. His wife to a jail sentence of five months and three weeks, Walther Nickels to four months in jail.

From the judicial opinion of Judge Dr. Fromm, Director of the District Court:
"He [Nickels] did not have a room of his own, but rather lived, so to speak, like the wife of the accused Nebelung. They slept together in the same bed and regularly performed the sexual act, like man and wife ... Therefore, it is the firm opinion of the court that the accused Nebelung, between December 1935 and February 1936, committed perverse acts as a man with another man, and that the accused Nickels in the same period allowed himself to be perversely misused by the accused Nebelung."

In January 1937, the Hamburg State Court rejected an appeal of the judgment.

Following his release from jail, Wilhelm Nebelung again fell into the clutches of the criminal police during a raid on the public bathroom on the corner of Lange Reihe Street in the Spadenteich district. Because, during his interrogation, he claimed to remember nothing, he was examined by a court physician on 29 November 1940. In their conversation Nebelung alleged that he had resorted to "cruising" because of his wife’s illness. To investigate the possibility of a diminished capacity to feel guilt, the court physician recommended a longer period of surveillance for Nebelung. The fourth criminal division of the Hamburg State Court ordered his confinement to the Langenhorn psychiatric hospital on 16 December 1940. On 10 March 1941, Nebelung was transported from there back to the Hamburg City detention center.

By a ruling of the Hamburg State Court, the Langenhorn departmental physician, Dr. A. Georg Saupe, completed a medical appraisal. From his conversation with Dorothea Nebelung, it appears she stood by her husband. Concerning Wihelm Nebelung he states:
"Physically, he shows none of the feminine features that occasionally occur with homosexuals ... According to more modern methods of diagnosing homosexuals, it is to be accepted that the effect, in Nebelung’s case as well, stems from a hereditary endocrinal disturbance ... Since it is the duty of every man to deal with his hereditary makeup, homosexuals cannot be excepted from this duty. It may well be that abnormal instinctual drives can be seen as arising from hereditary makeup and the environment and that quantitative deviations remain subject to a form of endocrinal disturbance. If the healthy person is capable of controlling his sex drive, there is no cause to deny this capacity to the homosexual, simply because his drive is oriented in a deviant direction. Nebelung is psychologically not so different that the control and direction of his instinctual life is seriously impaired; if only he so wills, he can and must master himself. His bisexuality allows him ample opportunity to satisfy his sexual desires in marriage." These and similar stereotypes cited by medical authorities concerning the sexuality of married homosexual or bisexual men are to be found in numerous documents of the period.

On 20 May 1941, the District Court of Hamburg sentenced Wilhelm Nebelung to 18 months in jail, minus the three months of pretrial detention, for violations of §175. On the same day, Nebelung filed an appeal against the judgment. The appeal hearing took place on 16 July 1941 before the Hamburg State Court. The presiding judge upheld as appropriate the decision of the District Court, however raised the time already served in pretrial detention from three months to six. In his decision he stated: "The accused is well on his way to becoming a dangerous habitual criminal in the area of unnatural indecency ..."

From 1 October 1941, Wilhelm Nebelung served his sentence in the Glasmoor penitentiary. From 11 April 1942, he was in the central infirmary of the detention center of the City of Hamburg; on 16 July 1942 he was handed over to the Hamburg criminal police. Presumably, he, along with several other homosexuals, was incarcerated in the Hütten police jail and from there sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp. The date of admission, the prisoner number, as well as the exact date of death are all unknown. In all likelihood, he died after 16 July 1942 and in the Mauthausen concentration camp. In 1952, Wilhelm Nebelung was officially declared dead "as of January 1945."

In the files of the detention center of the City of Hamburg, Nebelung’s last police-recorded address was at Steindamm 22, 5th floor. In the Hamburg directory for 1942 and 1943, the car rental agency is also listed under this entry. But because he was at this time already in prison and lived for the longest time with his wife at Hansaplatz 8, the commemorative stone will be laid there as a remembrance of his fate.


Translator: Richard Levy

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: November 2017
© Bernhard Rosenkranz (†)/Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH, 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 1476/37. StaH, 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 4980/42. VAN (Hrsg.), Totenliste Hamburger Widerstandskämpfer und Verfolgter, Hamburg 1968. StaH 332-8 Meldewesen, Alphabetische Meldekartei 1945–1957, darin Hinweis auf Todeserklärung beim Amtsgericht Hamburg, Az. 58 II 705/1952; StaH, 376-2 Gewerbepolizei, Gewerbeanmeldung 1931–1945.