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Erich Kistner
© Ev. Stiftung Alsterdorf

Erich Kistner * 1935

Legienstraße 113 (Hamburg-Mitte, Horn)

HIER WOHNTE
ERICH KISTNER
JG. 1935
DEPORTIERT 7.8.1943
’HEILANSTALT’
KALMENHOF/IDSTEIN
ERMORDET 21.8.1943

Erich Kistner, born 7 May 1935 in Hamburg, murdered on 21 August 1943 at the Kalmenhof psychiatric hospital in Idstein/Taunus

Legienstrasse 113

Erich Kistner only lived to be eight years. He was born on May 7th, 1935 as the last of three children of his parents Walter Kistner and Gertrud, née Böttcher, at the Marienkrankenhaus in Hamburg-Hohenfelde and at first showed no abnormalities, except for the fact that he already got teeth at the age of three months. At two years, he began suffering from camp attacks; half a year later, he started walking and speaking individual words. The cramp attacks became more frequent, from initially once every four to eight weeks to daily and even more often. At the beginning of June 1939, Erich was now four years old, Gertrud Kistner took her son to the Friedrichsberg neurological hospital. He weighed 15 kg, less than average for a boy of 108 cm. After only a few days of observation, Erich on June 12th was diagnosed as a "juvenile epileptic” and transferred to the Alsterdorfer Anstalten, an institution for mentally retarded and otherwise handicapped persons. The company health insurance of the Hamburg America Line, where Walter Kistner worked as a mechanic, assumed the cost up to the contracted limit. On December 29th, the Hamburg social authority recognized the need for the child’s hospitalization until October 13t, 1945. The health insurance did not extend the assumption of the cost.

Erich Kistner was given lightly dosed Luminal, which, however, did not suppress the cramps. They started with screaming and contractions on the right side of the body, after which he either fell to sleep or into the next attack. After two months, the attacks stopped, and Erich made progress at walking, threw toys around instead of playing with them and occasionally injured other patients by biting or scratching them. He learned to eat with a spoon and stay dry. His vocabulary remained small. As he increasingly suffered from dizziness, he often had to stay in bed. A switch from Luminal to Glyboral brought no sustainable improvement. Completely dependent, Erich was transferred to the institution’s department for men at the age of seven. At the beginning of 1943, he had only short attacks, but permanently remained in bed, tore up bedclothes and underwear with his teeth, ate only bread and mashed potatoes and refused body care. At the beginning of August, 1943, when patients were to be selected for transfer to other institutions on account of the crowding of Alsterdorf and damage to buildings by the bombing, Erich Kistner belonged to the first transport that left Alsterdorf on the 7th of the month for the psychiatric institution at Kalmenhof near Idstein im Taunus. There, he was murdered on August 21st, 1943, after only a two weeks’ stay.

Translated by Peter Hubschmid

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Initiative Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Billstedt

Quellen: Ev. Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, V 61; Jenner, Meldebögen, in: Wunder/Genkel/Jenner (Hrsg.), Ebene; Wunder, Abtransporte, in: Wunder/Genkel/Jenner (Hrsg.), Ebene; ders., Exodus, ebd.; www.hessen.de.