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Ida Rathjens (née Harder) * 1881

Brackdamm 1-3 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hammerbrook)

HIER WOHNTE
IDA RATHJENS
GEB. HARDER
JG. 1881
EINGEWIESEN 14.8.1943
’HEILANSTALT’
STEINHOF/WIEN
ERMORDET 10.4.1944

Ida Rathjens, née Harder, b. 12.5.1881 in Güstrow (Mecklenburg), murdered on 4.10.1944 in the "Wagner von Jauregg Viennese Medical and Nursing Home”

Corner of Brackdamm/Bullerdeich (Brackdamm 1)

Ida Harder grew up in Güstrow as a worker’s child with two brothers and a sister; her mother was Swedish. She went to public elementary school and suffered at the age of 10 or 12 from a disease of the eye which threatened to leave her blind. Without finishing school, she took a position in the Mecklenburg countryside as a servant girl.

She was a petite woman. When she reached adulthood, she moved to Hamburg, went into "service” there, and got to know Bernhard Rathjens in 1904. They married in 1905. From the marriage there came two daughters who survived infancy and a son who died as a child.

In 1912, Ida Rathjens began to go deaf which was combined with vertigo, making her unsteady on her feet. With her loss of hearing, a change in character set in. She ceased to be interested in people or things and assumed that others were talking about her. By 1918, when she could no longer hear much of anything, she shrank back from loud noises such as whistling, knocking, and music, and she also experienced dizziness. The following year she was thoroughly examined at the ear clinic of the General Hospital of St. Georg. A hearing text revealed that she was absolutely deaf. With a diagnosis of incurable "otosclerosis," she returned to her family. Without her husband’s help, Ida Rathjens could no longer care for her family. Her condition depressed her, she became suspicious and nervous.

Plagued by her conscience and fearful that her real or alleged stealing of money, when she had been in service in Hamburg in 1904, would become public knowledge, she attempted suicide by gas in February 1928. She failed. She was again sent to the St. Georg General Hospital and, after a month, released as "better."

She could no longer perform her household duties, ate little, and, in the night, gave her husband no peace. She sat at the window and observed how the lights across the street went on and off, which, in her opinion, meant that people were waiting for her to go to bed before coming to take her away to "Friedrichsberg,” the state insane asylum. She rained kisses on her husband in order to chase away the light, and she reported hearing sounds in her head.

On 25 November 1930, Bernhard Rathjens finally brought his wife to "Friedrichsberg," from which, in January 1931, she was nonetheless released home despite "paranoid hardness of hearing.” After four and one half years, and once again suffering from severe confusion and pursued by hallucinations, she was committed to Friedrichsberg. On the rationale that it was no longer possible for her to live with "normal people,” she was on 8 August 1935, transferred to the Alsterdorf Institute. The costs for her stay were met by the Welfare Office. To safeguard her interests during divorce proceedings in July 1936, a guardian was appointed. Since her suffering was considered acquired (rather than inherited), neither she nor anyone from her family were subject to the measures of the persecutory Hereditary Health Law.

Ida Rathjens worked quietly and with satisfaction in the weaving class or occupied herself with needlework – crocheting was her favorite. While dancing on 29 December 1935, she fell and broke the right femur of her neck and had to be bandaged. Because she tore off the dressing, healing was protracted. Not until 1937 could she again get around with a walker. Aside from frequent abscesses of the sweat glands, she remained physically healthy. She did not attract attention, showed little interest in her surroundings, spoke and ate little, and needed assistance to take care of herself physically. She did not regain her ability to work. She was transferred to Station 36, where women with similar disabilities lived.

After the heavy destruction due to Allied air raids over Hamburg in July 1943, Pastor Lensch pleaded with the Hamburg Health Administration to transfer the institute’s patients, in order to make room for those left homeless and wounded by the bombing. "The Charitable Ambulance Company, LLC” of Berlin sent its busses on 7, 10, and 14 August 1943 to take the patients to Idstein, Mainkofen, and Vienna. The lists of those to be transported were compiled by the Institute directors. They used the opportunity to rid themselves of the severely disabled, those who needed intensive care, or were otherwise frequently ill. Ida Rathjens was among 21 fellow-women patients from her Station in this category and part of a larger group of 228 who were brought to the "State Mental Hospital Am Steinhof,” which in the meantime had been renamed, the "Wagner von Jauregg Viennese Medical and Nursing Home.” The personnel there communicated with her in writing, because of her deafness. She mostly stayed in bed. Her mood alternated between depression and spontaneous laughter. She paid little attention to herself. In consequence of starvation rations, she steadily wasted away and contracted in the spring of 1944 double pneumonia; she died from this cause on 10 April 1944 at the of 63.

Upon inquiring about the passing of her mother, her daughter received this news at the end of May 1944: "Your mother was always peaceful and contented. She became ill on 30 March 1944 with bronchitis. On 3 April, pneumonia was confirmed. On 10 April 1944, she died. The funeral followed at the Vienna central cemetery."


Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2018
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: Ev. Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, V 255; Jenner, Meldebögen, in: Wunder/Genkel/Jenner, Ebene, S. 169–178; Wunder, Abtransporte, in: ebd., S. 181–188; ders., Exodus, ebd. S. 189–236.