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Erna Müller * 1898

Brennerstraße 58 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

HIER WOHNTE
ERNA MÜLLER
JG. 1898
VERHAFTET 22.4.1939
'UNANGEPASSTES VERHALTEN'
1941 POLIZEIGEFÄNGNIS
HAMBURG-HÜTTEN
DEPORTIERT
AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET 22.10.1942

Erna Müller, born on 7 Jan. 1898 in Güstrow (Mecklenburg), perished in Auschwitz on 22 Oct. 1942

last residential address: Brennerstrasse 58

Erna Müller was the daughter of the brick maker Wilhelm Müller and his first wife Emma, née Wilke, who already died in the year of Erna’s birth. Erna had eight siblings, some of whom at least were possibly the offspring from her father’s second marriage to Olga, née Friede, born in 1864. She reportedly had "no dealings at all” with her siblings. Soon after the death of his first wife, Wilhelm Müller seems to have moved to Hamburg, where he worked as the owner of a laundry shop for 32 years; he passed away in 1933.

No further details are available about Erna’s childhood and youth. In the years 1921 and 1923, she apparently underwent hospital treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. In 1926, her father commented very negatively on her before the Hamburg welfare office, saying that she was "a loafer, careless and work-shy” and belonged "in the workhouse, as a matter of fact.” He had kicked her out of the home several times already, only taking her in again at her stepmother’s pleading; once she even stole a customer’s laundry and gave it to her "lover” as a present.

In 1926, the welfare authority decreed that Erna Müller was to be committed to "closed care.” However, she evaded supervision by the authority by frequently changing her place of residence from one Hamburg district to another. Without being registered, she and "fiancés” would often reside "with guesthouse hostesses” – however, she did not become known to the authorities as a prostitute. When she ran out of funds to cover her living expenses, she would steal from her hostesses and sometimes also from her fellow subtenants, selling off the goods afterward. In the years between 1919 and 1935, she was sentenced to short prison terms for theft and fraud ten times; she was sentenced to the highest prison term, one year, in 1935. Five of these convictions until 1921 were pronounced by courts in Mecklenburg, where she apparently stayed in those years, the others were handed down by Hamburg legal authorities. In Nov. 1932, a medical expert’s report diagnosed her with a stomach disorder, classifying her as "unfit for work.”

In May 1933, the Hamburg District Court (Amtsgericht) sentenced her to two months in prison. In the years 1934 and 1935, she once again committed criminal offenses, with the District Courts of Wandsbek and Hamburg sentencing her for theft and fraud to an overall penalty of one year in prison, which she served until the end of Jan. 1936. At the beginning of June 1936, she moved in with the worker Ernst Gutsche (born in 1876) as a subtenant of a woman by the name of Louise Rademacher at Brennerstrasse 58 in St. Georg. During her two-year cohabitation with Gutsche, she worked – with interruptions – in a fish-processing plant. However, when she stole from her partner and took the stolen goods "to the pawnshop,” he separated from her in the summer of 1938. Afterward, Erna Müller increasingly got into financial difficulties, because according to her own information, she had "no regular employment” anymore since 16 Dec. 1938, only "doing work as an ironer on a temporary basis.” She continued to reside in the apartment at Brennerstrasse 58 until 17 Mar. 1939, leaving that accommodation, however, without informing her landlady of her new whereabouts and stealing items from her.

During the following weeks, she sought contact to men unknown to her, going on pub crawls with them through Hamburg bars and stealing from them unnoticed money and other valuables once they were sufficiently drunk. After one man she had robbed recognized her in a bar, she was arrested on 22 Apr. 1939. The Senior Public Prosecutor (Oberstaatsanwalt) with the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht) charged her on 10 May as a "repeat thief and dangerous habitual offender.” Eventually, the court sentenced her to two years in prison on 29 June 1939, though refusing to classify her as a "dangerous habitual offender,” even though ordering police supervision immediately upon release from prison. On 26 Apr. 1941, however, after having served her sentence, Erna Müller was not released to (supervised) freedom but transferred to "police preventive detention” ("polizeiliche Vorbeugehaft”) in the Hamburg-Hütten police prison. It is not known when she was committed to the Auschwitz concentration camp, only the date of her death, 22 Oct. 1942.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Benedikt Behrens

Quelle: StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 5155/39; StaH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Abl. 13 und 2000/1; Schreiben des Museums Auschwitz-Birkenau v. 30.6.2005 und E-Mail dess. v. 5.8.2005.