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Willy Unger * 1908

Schenkendorfstraße 30 (Hamburg-Nord, Uhlenhorst)

HIER WOHNTE
WILLY UNGER
JG. 1908
VERHAFTET 1939
EMSLANDLAGER
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
22.1.1943

Willy Erich Georg Unger, born 9/19/1908, imprisoned 1938–1940, suicide in Hamburg on 1/22/1943

Schenkendorfstrasse 30

The list of sexual practices that the Hamburg court of appeals confronted Willy Unger with starts with "mutual masturbation in the Mediterranean.” Unger, then not quite 30 years old, was accused of offenses that had occurred almost three years before when he worked as steward on cruises ships of the Levante line and later on HAPAG boats. His last boss, the captain of the HAPAG steamer Ionia, had started the large-scale investigation of Unger’s private life by filing charges against him with the Hamburg police in April 1938 – the captain had heard about his first steward’s "homosexual activities” with juvenile crew members. Unger was taken into investigative custody on May 3rd, 1938.

Willy Unger, born September 19th, 1908 as the son of Wilhelm Unger and his wife Frida, née Hopp. Young Willy first absolved a commercial apprenticeship at an im-and export company and then went to sea as a kitchen boy for a year. Until 1930, he did commercial office work in Hamburg, before again going to sea, now as a steward on the steamer Ruhr bound for Eastern Asia, later as 1st steward on the HAPAG ship Ionia in the Mediterranean.

In September 1938, he was sentenced to two years at hard labor for four counts of attempted and consummated crime pursuant to Art. 175 a no. 3 and six counts of an offense pursuant to Art. 175. Willy Unger served his sentence at Fuhlsbüttel prison and from the end of February 1939 at various concentration camps in the Emsland region, e.g. Börgermoor. After his release on May 1st, 1940, he worked as a waiter in Hamburg.

Possibly, Willy Unger again got into the sights of the Hamburg criminal police at the beginning of 1943, as he took his own life using gas on January 22nd, 1943 in his room at Schenkendorfstrasse 30, where he lived as a subtenant on the 4th floor. As the persons to be notified after his death he named his sister-in-law and his friend Max Paustian, who himself had been imprisoned 1940–1941 on account of Art. 175.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

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

Quellen: StaHH, 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 10587/39; StaHH, 331-5 Polizeibehörde – Unnatürliche Sterbefälle, 337/43; StaHH, 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung, Abl. 2, 451 a E 1, 1 e; StaHH, 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferungen 13 und 16; Staatsarchiv Osnabrück, Rep. 947 Lingen II Nr. 7227; B. Rosenkranz/U. Bollmann/G. Lorenz: Homosexuellen-Verfolgung in Hamburg 1919–1969, S. 263. Auskünfte Rainer Hoffschildt, Hannover und Christian-Alexander Wäldner, Ronnenberg-Weetzen, aus 2009 und 2010.