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Gerda Möller
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Gerda Möller * 1913

Angelnstraße 2 (Hamburg-Nord, Dulsberg)

HIER WOHNTE
GERDA MÖLLER
JG. 1913
EINGEWIESEN 16.8.1943
’HEILANSTALT’
STEINHOF / WIEN
ERMORDET 8.7.1944

Gerda Möller, born on 1 May 1913 in Hamburg, died in the Vienna Municipal "Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt" on 8 July 1944

Angelnstrasse 2

Gerda was born as the youngest of four children. She was a half-orphan. Her father, the postal worker Hans Möller, was killed in World War I. The mother, Olga Möller, née Ditz, lived with the children at least until 1940 with the grandmother on the Dulsberg. This is also where Gerda resided until she was, after a three-month stay in what was then the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg), admitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum (Alsterdorfer Anstalten; today Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on 30 July 1935 at the age of 22.

In her early childhood, Gerda did not suffer from any unusual illnesses. She learned to walk and speak somewhat later than others. However, at the age of five, she fell ill with meningitis, a disease that would influence her entire subsequent life. Her medical file indicates that "afterward [she had] always remained a bit childlike but not dangerous.” Later, the diagnosis was mental disability ”pfropfschizophrenie” as a result of meningitis, in contemporary medicine a common designation for the occurrence of schizophrenia in patients with "low intellectual ability.”

Gerda initially attended the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule), then, until age 14, what was called "special school” in those days, and subsequently a further training school (comparable to today’s specialized vocational schools).

In either Jan. 1935 or 1936, Gerda was forcibly sterilized at the Barmbeck General Hospital based on the decision of the "Hereditary Health Court” (Erbgesundheitsgericht).

The basis of the decision by the "Hereditary Health Court” was the "Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” ("Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses”) dated 14 July 1933. This law made it possible for persons "to be rendered infertile (sterilized) by surgical procedure if according to the expertise of medical science it is to be expected with a high degree of probability that his (her) offspring will suffer from serious physical or mental genetic defects.”

In the implementing commentaries on this law, the authors went so far as to claim that anyone not physically and mentally healthy and "worthy” should not be allowed to pass on his/her suffering and anomalies in the shape of a child. The determined will of the legislation, they argued, was to "purify the national body [Volkskörper]” and "eradicate morbid hereditary dispositions,” requiring "selection according to performance” to take place. "Persons with a hereditary disease” who suffered from "congenital feeblemindedness” were to be sterilized. Suspected of this were persons who did not earn their living "in a regular working life” and failed to integrate themselves socially. Anyone only "capable of constantly recurring tasks” all the time was also under suspicion. Particularly suspicious, the commentary continued, were special school students, and the characteristics of hereditary feeblemindedness were early criminality, conflicts with school and the police as well as lack of discrimination vis-à-vis influences. The Hamburg Hereditary Court scheduled about five minutes for each person summoned. Approx. 400,000 persons were forcibly sterilized in Germany between 1934 and 1945.

In Alsterdorf, Gerda Möller was described as "helpful” after some initial difficulties at settling in. She "lends a helping hand on a modest scale, plays very nicely with the smaller fellow patients. Under supervision, she can take care of her personal hygiene herself.” (1937/1938).

Her life in Alsterdorf changed between restless phases with reduced independence and times when she was described as helpful, affectionate, and calm. In Mar. 1943, her medical file contains the following entry:
"Pat.[ient] requires help with personal hygiene. Under guidance, she can provide modest assistance toward housework. In terms of her personality, she is quite childlike, enjoys playing with dolls. At night, she wears a protective jacket [i.e., a straitjacket] because she scratches herself. She is always good-natured and cheerful and has a good appetite.”

In the meantime, Gerda Möller’s mother had married the coal merchant Otto Schmidt, and from then on her name was Olga Schmidt. Both of them, Gerda’s mother and the stepfather, were continuously concerned about Gerda. Still preserved in the files is the request by Mrs. Schmidt to grant her daughter leave on her twenty-sixth birthday on 1 May 1939.

On 16 Aug. 1943, Gerda Möller was taken on the last large-scale transport from the Alsterdorf Asylum to Vienna, along with another 228 girls as well as middle-aged and old women, many children with severe mental or even only physical disabilities, as well as 72 mostly elderly women, in some cases frail and in some cases bewildered due to air raids, from Langenhorn, including five women older than 80 years. Michael Wunder reported on this, "At the end of July/early August, the heavy air raids of the Allies on Hamburg took place (‘Operation Gomorrah’). Whereas the first attacks on 24/25 July and 27/28 July did not do any damage to the Alsterdorf Asylum, the Asylum sustained heavy damage during the night of 29/30 July 1943 and once again during the night of 3/4 Aug. 1943. For several days, the Asylum had to admit hundreds of homeless people as well as approx. 200 persons injured in the bombings. On 30 July 1943, Pastor Lensch contacted the public health department and asked for approx. 750 patients of the institution to be transported off.” Pastor Friedrich Lensch, who made it all the way to Senior Squad Leader of the SA (Oberscharführer, a rank equivalent to technical sergeant) in the course of the war, had been serving as the director of the Alsterdorf Asylum since 14 Sept. 1930.

On several transports on 7 Aug., 11 Aug., and 16 Aug. 1943, a total of 468 children, women, and men were taken to the "Kalmenhof sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Kalmenhof”) near Idstein, the Eichberg "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Eichberg”) in the Rheingau region, the "sanatorium and nursing home” in Mainkofen ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Mainkofen”) near Passau, and the "State Asylum and Nursing Institution for Mentally Ill and Neuropathic Patients on Steinhof” ("Landes- und Pflegeanstalt für Geistes- und Nervenkranke am Steinhof”) in Vienna. They were transported on the gray busses of the ‘charitable ambulance organization’ (Gemeinnützige Krankentransport GmbH – ‘GekraT’) featuring windows with dark curtains drawn or covered with dark paint, so that the victims could not gaze out and the residents of the towns through which the busses passed could not to see the victims.

The busses making up the transport to Vienna set out from Alsterdorf on 16 Aug. 1943. While still in Hamburg, the inmates changed to train cars aboard which they reached Vienna on 17 Aug. 1943.

Only upon inquiry by Gerda’s mother Olga Schmidt, did the Viennese "State Asylum and Nursing Institution for Mentally Ill and Neuropathic Patients on Steinhof” inform her, "Your child has been in the local institution since 17 Aug. 1943. She made it through the transport fine and she has settled in well to the new circumstances. In terms of her condition […], nothing has changed of course. The physical state remains unchanged as well. The greetings were passed on and received happily. Dr. Podhajaky.”

Upon her admission in Vienna in Aug. 1943, Gerda Möller weighed 53 kilograms (just under 117 lbs). In the years before, her weight had been recorded as considerably more than 60 kilograms (approx. 132 lbs). In January, it had decreased to 51 kg (112 lbs) and in June 1944 to 45 kg (99 lbs). An entry on 21 Mar 1944 noted that she was "unusable” in terms of work. Another young woman taken to Vienna from Alsterdorf reported upon her return to Hamburg, "They hated us so much.” She went on to state, "Most of the time, we got only potato peels to eat.”

On 8 July 1944, Gerda Möller died in Vienna at the age of 31 years. The cause of death indicated was pneumonia, with the following addition: "Pat.[tient] was extremely emaciated physically due to prolonged severe state of excitement.” The severe state of excitement was determined on 28 June and traced back to the last air raid alert.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Patientenakten der Alsterdorfer Anstalten, Az. V 149 (Gerda Möller); Michael Wunder/Ingrid Genkel/Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr, Hamburg 1987; Alexander Mayer (2001). Eine Geschichte der Behinderten, Jubiläums-Dokumentation 40 Jahre Lebenshilfe Fürth. Lebenshilfe Fürth: Eigenverlag. S. 6–27, veröffentlicht unter www.trisomie21.de/lh_fuerth.html#IV.3. (eingesehen am 26.7.2011).