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Adolf Schütz * 1897

Wandsbeker Chaussee 118 (Wandsbek, Eilbek)

HIER WOHNTE
ADOLF SCHÜTZ
JG. 1897
VERHAFTET 1935/38
EMSLANDLAGER
BUCHENWALD
ERMORDET 8.3.1942

further stumbling stones in Wandsbeker Chaussee 118:
Helmut Petersen

Adolf Emil Max Schütz, born on 23 Sept. 1897 in Hamburg, died on 8 Mar. 1942 in the Buchenwald concentration camp

Wandsbeker Chaussee 118 (Wandsbeker Chaussee 132/row house at Eilbeckerallee 12)

Adolf Schütz was born in Hamburg-Altstadt in 1897 as the son of the tailor Adolph Schütz and Johanna, née Spenker, and baptized a Lutheran. After attending the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule), from 1912 onward he probably did a commercial apprenticeship. Subsequently, he became a traveling salesman. From 1915 until 1918, he served in the First World War. Starting in 1926, he lived in Flensburg, got involved in founding the Flensburg Canoe Club and became its first chairman.

Due to his homosexual orientation, the slender man with light brown hair, wearing glasses and measuring 1.70 meters (nearly 5 ft 7 in) had sexual contacts with other men even before the war, continuing to maintain such relations during and after the war.

However, as a youth leader in his Flensburg canoe club, from 1934 onward, he used contact with 14- to 15-year-old boys to seduce them. Even if these homosexual acts occurred by mutual consent and in some cases the boys took pleasure in them among their peers, even according to today’s administration of justice, the problem of taking advantage of a dependent relationship remains.

For the first time, Adolf Schütz was arrested on charges of sexual contact to an adolescent barely 15 years of age from his canoe club in Sept. 1935. On 5 Nov. 1935, the Lübeck court of lay assessors (Schöffengericht) sentenced him to one year and six months in prison for "unnatural sexual offense” ("widernatürliche Unzucht”). Initially, he served this sentence in the Fuhlsbüttel men’s prison and subsequently, from July 1936 until his release on 5 Apr. 1937, in Lübeck. As early as Nov. 1937, he was again committed to pretrial detention in the Hamburg penitentiary on Holstenglacis. Due to his confession, during this period investigations regarding additional homosexual acts with adolescents from his canoe club were conducted. This time, the indictment was initiated by the Flensburg public prosecutor’s office. The trial took place on 4 Feb. 1938 before the "Second Grand Criminal Chamber” (Zweite Grosse Strafkammer) of the Flensburg Regional Court (Landgericht). He admitted six additional cases dating from the years 1934 and 1935, some of which took place after the increase of penalties in Sec. 175 of the Reich Criminal Code (Reichsstrafgesetzbuch – RStGB) in the summer of 1935, resulting in a more severe sentence: At this point, Adolf Schütz was sentenced as a "dangerous habitual offender” to an overall penalty of four years in a penitentiary for "unnatural sexual offenses with men.” Although in the judgment, the court did not impose subsequent "preventive detention,” from today’s perspective the additional forfeit of civil rights for the duration of five years as well as the entire wording of the verdict point to imminent subsequent penalties common in the time of Nazi rule. Initially, he was taken from the Flensburg court prison to the Fuhlsbüttel penitentiary on 28 Mar. 1938, only to be transported further to the Emsland camp VII Esterwegen on 4 June 1938. Having served the sentence on 15 Dec. 1941, he was placed in police "preventive detention” ("Vorbeugehaft”), being committed as a prisoner classified thus to the Buchenwald concentration camp on 29 Jan. 1942 and receiving prisoner number 5,703. After only a few weeks, he died there on 8 Mar. 1942, at the age of 44.

The Stolperstein for Adolf Schütz was laid in Eilbek in front of the house at Wandsbeker Chaussee 118. In the past, this had been the location of "Wandsbecker Chaussee 132,” behind which there was a passage leading to Eilbeckerallee, where after his last prison term, Adolf Schütz lived again with his mother in one of the row houses, no. 12.


Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: January 2019
© Bernhard Rosenkranz(†)/Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesarchiv, Abt. 354 Nr. 11142 mit Dank an Frau Dr. Dagmar Bickelmann für die Recherche; StaH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferungen 13 u. 16; 332-5 Standesämter, 2425 (Eintrag Nr. 2199); Rosenkranz/Bollmann/Lorenz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung, S. 255.