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Dorothea Kasten
© Ev. Stiftung Alsterdorf

Dorothea Kasten * 1907

Caspar-Voght-Straße 79 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

1943 Heilanstalt Steinhof Wien
ermordet am 2.5.1944

Dorothea Kasten, born 6 Mar. 1907 in Hamburg, moved 16 Aug. 1943 to the Wagner von Jauregg Care and Nursing Home of the City Vienna, killed 2 May 1944

Caspar-Voght-Straße 79

"If someone doesn’t take me away from here now, I will take myself away." With these words, Dorothea Kasten expressed where she felt at home: at the Alsterdorfer Institution. She was placed there due to a mental disability. If her vacation grew too long, she demanded her return in her own way.
Dorothea Alma Elise Marie Kasten was born on 6 Mar. 1907 in her parents’ apartment at Sachsenstraße 96 in Hamburg-Hammerbrook. She was the first child of Friedrich Adolf Heinrich Kasten, accountant by profession, and his wife Dorothee Margarete Karoline, née Lange. Both parents came from families with many children and belonged to the Protestant-Lutheran Church. At the age of three months, Dorothea was baptized at St. Katharin’s Church. One year after her birth, her sister Hildburg came into the world.

Dorothea, called Thea, was sick from birth, yet she learned to walk at the age of one and a half and to speak when she was two. She endured the infectious diseases measles and whooping cough. She began her education at the elementary school and attended until the third grade, which was equivalent to today’s sixth. She enjoyed going to school. Apart from math, she liked all subjects. She retained the material and could apply what she had learned.
When she was eight, she developed a spinal disease which led to the formation of a hump, despite two years of orthopedic treatment.
After she was dismissed from school in 1921, she learned housekeeping at a children’s home in Springe am Deister for six months: cooking, baking, sewing. Afterwards she worked for one year under the leadership of a Sister Hedwig at a daycare center in Hanover, a job she found very satisfying and that she would have liked to return to when she was back living at home. Dorothea wanted to have an "independent occupation" like her sister who lived as a nurse at the Eppendorf General Hospital, in which she could work with children. She blamed her parents for the fact that she did not have enough education for it.

Dorothea played piano and harmonium and joined the young girls’ club of Pastor Hagedorn in Dulsberg where the family now lived on Angelnstraße. While she was very friendly in her contact with other people, she was very rebellious towards her parents, to the point that she violently attacked her mother. Her mood changed ever more strongly, she became dependent and had to be constantly supervised to prevent her from hurting herself. When the burden on her mother became too great, they considered placing Dorothea in an institution as a way out.

On 15 July 1931 at the age of 24, she was first admitted to the former Alsterdorfer Institutions. The medical examination revealed microcephaly, an under-sized head and "feeble-mindedness of intermediate grade". Despite her mental disability, she was able to do small jobs, for instance she helped the nurses with breakfast, and she liked to play harmonium. Her mother visited her frequently and Dorothea regularly was given leave to visit her parents’ home. At first her father bore the cost of the three Reichsmarks daily for her accommodation. Yet since he also had to provide for his mother and daughter Hildburg, in Sept. he requested a reduction to two Marks, pointing out Dorothea’s ability to work. His application was approved. In May 1932, Dorothea’s parents brought her home at her own request.
Ten months later, one day after her 26th birthday, Dorothea returned to the former Alsterdorf Asylum. At the home for girls where she now lived, she worked in the kitchen, washing up and peeling potatoes, to the full satisfaction of care staff. She liked to play the harmonium here too. In accordance with the Heredity Health Law, the senior physician of the institution Gerhard Kreyenberg wrote a heredity health report which addressed the question of sterilization. It had no personal consequences for Dorothea since she was under constant supervision, both at the institution and at home. Her Christmas visit with her parents in 1933, who in the meantime had moved to Hamburg-Hamm, was granted to her, despite a general stop on leave, albeit cut short.
Good phases alternated with bad ones in which she was stubborn and inflicted abrasion wounds on herself. Then she was taken to the guard room where she could be supervised for her own protection. She no longer could manage her personal hygiene or washing her clothes by herself. On 15 August 1934, her parents brought her home again.
Dorothea expressed great homesickness for Alsterdorf at the beginning of 1935 and was admitted for a third time on 20 March. Her behavior remained unbalanced, and she was treated the same as before. On 12 Oct. 1936 she was released home once again, but returned to the institution before the end of the month.

On 16 Aug. 1943 Dorothea Kasten was moved, together with 227 other women and girls, directly from the Alsterdorf Asylum to the mental home Wagner von Jauregg Care and Nursing Facility of the City Vienna, the former Steinhof. The director of the institution was interested concretely in creating space for bombing victims, in addition to carrying out the hereditary-hygiene instructions of the Reich leadership. When it turned out that the bombed-out residents of Hamburg found refuge in surrounding regions, the transport machinery had already been set in motion and was not stopped. The Vienna care facility practiced "quiet euthanasia" since the first phase of euthanasia had to be abandoned in 1941 due to public protests. Not all new admissions from Hamburg were necessarily subjected to "euthanasia"; those who were fit for work stayed alive.

As a letter from her sister Hildburg to the Alsterdorf Protestant Charity from 1985 shows, Dorothea Kasten’s mother traveled to Vienna in May 1944 to visit her daughter. She found her in a pitiful state. Her weight at her departure of 49 kg had dropped to 33 kg. Dorothea wanted her mother to take her back to Hamburg with her. The institution’s doctors did not allow it. They told her mother that Dorothea was suffering from an intestinal fistula and it would be best if she were euthanized. On 2 May 1944, "after a hard fight … my mother consented to send her child back to the spiritual world. (She) used all of her ration stamps to buy sweets and cake. They drank coffee together. At 2:00 p.m. … after she finished eating her cake with great pleasure, she said ‘Now I’m tired and want to sleep. Don’t forget to take me with you’."
Mrs. Kasten took her daughter with her to Hamburg in a coffin, to bury her.
Today the street that leads to the main entrance of the Alsterdorf Asylum is named Dorothea-Kasten-Straße and thus bears Dorothea Kasten’s name in remembrance.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: Ev. Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, V 184; Wunder, Michael; Genkel, Ingrid; Jenner, Harald: Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr, Hamburg, 2. Aufl, 1988, S. 231f.; Wunder, Michael: Die Euthanasie-Morde im Steinhof am Beispiel der Hamburger Mädchen und Frauen, in: Spurensuche Irma, zusammengestellt von Antje Kusemund, Hg.: VVN, 2. Aufl. 2005, S. 32–42.