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Hedwig Kramper * 1921

Schröderstraße 22 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

1942 Heilanst.Tiegenhof/Gniezno
ermordet am 18.1.1942

Hedwig Kramper, born on 11 Nov. 1921 in Hamburg, death on 18 Jan. 1942 in the Tiegenhof "Gau mental asylum” ("Gauheilanstalt”)

Schröderstrasse 22 (formerly Schröderstrasse 26)

"What they all die of,” replied the senior resident physician of Tiegenhof when Bernhard Barkmann asked him about the cause of his son Herbert’s death. In Nov. 1941, Herbert Barkmann, born on 27 Apr. 1923 in Elmshorn and originally accommodated in what was then the Alsterdorf Asylum (Alsterdorfer Anstalten) in Hamburg, arrived via an intermediate stop in the Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Langenhorn”) at the Tiegenhof "Gau mental asylum,” where he died at Easter of 1942. Bernhard Barkmann worked out for himself that his son had starved to death and had eventually received a lethal injection. He buried him in the cemetery of the Tiegenhof "sanatorium” and later reported as one of the few eyewitnesses about the murders there. His description can be applied to the fate of Hedwig Kramper. There is no information about her from relatives or a medical record, but some small traces exist.

The first trace is the admission register of the former Alsterdorf Asylum, where Hedwig Sophia Maria Kramper is listed under 21 May 1924; at that time, she was two and a half years old. Her parents, Selmar Friedrich Willy Kramper and Maria Elisabetha Katharina, née Peters, lived at Schröderstrasse 26 in Hohenfelde. Another trace is the hereditary health ancestral chart (erbgesundheitlicher Stammbaum), according to which Hedwig was a twin child. Her brother Alfred Adolf René died of "insufficient vitality” ("Lebensschwäche”) at the age of ten days, even before he had been discharged from the Institute for Obstetrics in Hamburg, the Finkenau. There was an older, healthy brother who reached adulthood. Two younger brothers also died as children, one of them, Fritz Max Hans, also at the age of only ten days in the birth clinic.

Born in 1879, Willy Kramper was the illegitimate son of a Hamburg seamstress. Maria Kramper’s father was the musician Wilhelm Peters from Homburg vor der Höhe. Maria, too, was born there in 1883; at the time of her wedding, she lived in Schopfheim in Baden. Both spouses belonged to the Lutheran Church. When he married in Apr. 1919, Willy Kramper’s profession was indicated as that of an editor, five years later as that of a worker. He suffered from a chronic lung condition. Hedwig’s mother, Maria Kramper died on 13 February 1935, only 52 years of age.

According to the hereditary health report (Erbgesundheitsgutachten), Hedwig was helpless, unable to speak and incapable of controlling her bodily functions even as a young girl. She took no interest in her surroundings.

As head of the women’s department in Alsterdorf, Ursula Starck also completed the "T4” registration form for Hedwig Kramper. The organizers of "euthanasia” used the questionnaire campaign to register all patients in "sanatoriums and nursing homes” in the German Reich who were aged three years or older. The responsible office was located at Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin, which is why the campaign was later called "T4.” Ursula Starck provided the details on Hedwig Kramper as she did for all patients "under the assumption that they would serve to decide whether someone should be resettled from the Alsterdorf Asylum and taken to an area less threatened by air raids,” as she later explained. It was not until 1942 that she learned what the questionnaires were actually used for, namely to decide whether a patient should be killed. Based on her information, the "T4” office decided that Hedwig Kramper, then 19 years old and in need of full-time care, as well as 20 other women, were to be transferred to the Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home.” This happened on 1 Aug. 1941, when Langenhorn served as a northern German collection point and transit station for the "T4” campaign. A group of 50 men had already been transferred to Langenhorn. The 71 men and women were to be transported to a killing facility, to be gassed soon after their arrival. Since the "T4 Operation” ("T4-Aktion”) was stopped in Aug. 1941, they escaped this fate. On 14 Nov. 1941, however, Hedwig Kramper and 68 of her fellow sufferers were transferred to the Tiegenhof "Gau mental asylum” ("Gauheilanstalt”), a former manor near Gnesen (today Gniezno in Poland) in the Free State of Danzig. Many of them were youths like she. This transport was followed in Nov. 1941 by four more comprised of 366 persons overall, among them the men originally coming from Alsterdorf. They were all given their medical records to take along, which then remained in Tiegenhof.

The Tiegenhof "Gau mental asylum,” built in pavilion style with 21 buildings for about 1,200 patients, existed as a "sanatorium and nursing home” even before the German occupation of Poland. After the installation of Viktor Ratka as the head of the institution and the murder of Polish patients by exhaust fumes from trucks, it served to murder thousands of patients by starvation rations and eventually by a fatal injection. Hedwig Kremper died in Tiegenhof on 18 Jan. 1942 at the age of 20, probably "what they all die of.”


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

Stand: December 2019
© Hildgard Thevs

Quellen: StaH 213-12 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht, NSG 0013/001 (Verlegungsliste Bl. 158); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6534 u. 201/1919; 7016 u. 699/1921; 7037 u. 262/1923; 7164 u. 160/1935; Ev. Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Aufnahmebuch und Erbgesundheitskartei; Michael Wunder u.a., Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr. Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, 2. Aufl., Hamburg, 1988.