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Hans-Peter Nielsen * 1909

Steindamm 19 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

HIER WOHNTE
HANS-PETER NIELSEN
JG. 1909
EINGEWIESEN 1943
HEIL- UND PFLEGEANSTALT
MAINKOFEN
TOT 20.2.1944
MANGELNDE PFLEGE

Hans-Peter Wilhelm Nielsen, b. 4.4.1909 in Selbeck, County of Essen/Ruhr, d. 2.20.1944 in Mainkofen Medical and Nursing Home

last home address: Steindamm 19

Hans-Peter Nielsen was the son of the machinist (or rather, engineer) Heinrich Nielsen and his wife Caroline, née Eggers; he had a sister named Luise. His father frequently worked in China, where he occasionally took his family; thus, Hans-Peter went to school partly in Shanghai. Since he was nine years old, the boy had epileptic seizures and from 1921 to 1925, he was in the Bethel Institute near Bielefeld, where he also continued his schooling.

In 1925 he was sent to the Farmsen Care Facility, from which he was released in 1927. In the 1930s, he lived mostly with his mother, while his father was once again staying in China. In September 1934, Hans-Peter was compulsorily sterilized in the St. Georg General Hospital; he received in-patient treatment there from January to March 1936 because of his chronic condition.

Because of his epileptic seizures, he was sent to the Alsterdorf Institute on 14 May 1936. Only a few weeks before his deportation to Mainkofen, the resident directing physician, Dr. Kreyenberg found "upper lobe tuberculosis and incipient purulent fusion." Neither this serious illness nor his (abortive) attempts to join the German Armed Forces in 1940 and 1942 could prevent him, along with 112 other Alsterdorf patients, from being deported on 10 August 1943 to the Mainkofen Medical and Nursing Home near Deggendorf on the Danube. Like 73 of the other former Alsterdorf patients, he, too, fell victim to the intentionally extremely poor living conditions and the inadequate care of patients at Mainkofen, dying there on 22 February 1944. Officially, his death was attributed to "tuberculosis," which surely seems probable in his case, but which does not excuse the fact that in Mainkofen he did not receive appropriate medical care


Translator: Richard Levy

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: November 2017
© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: Stiftung Alsterdorf, Patientenakten der Alsterdorfer Anstalten, V 465 (H.-P. Nielsen); M. Wunder/ I. Gen­kel/H. Jenner, "Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr". Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1987, S. 205–12.