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Ernst Mammen * 1918

Salzburger Häuser 4 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
ERNST MAMMEN
JG. 1918
EINGEWIESEN 1918
ROTENBURGER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 1941
HEILANSTALT WEILMÜNSTER
ERMORDET 30. 12. 1941

Ernst Mammen, born on 22 July 1918 in Wilhelmsburg, transferred from the Rotenburg Institute to the "Weilmünster Landesheilanstalt,” murdered there on 30 Dec. 1941

District of Harburg-Altstadt, Salzburger Häuser 4

When Ernst Mammen was born, the street where his mother lived was still called Hermannstrasse. This shortest connection between the (Harburg) city hall square and Neue Strasse, received today’s name of Salzburger Häuser only in 1950, commemorating the accommodation of 42 Lutherans expelled from the Salzburg and Berchtesgaden regions from 1731 until 1733, finding asylum in Harburg.

Since Ernst Mammen suffered from "idiocy” ("Idiotie”) since birth, he was already admitted to the Rotenburg Institute (Rotenburger Anstalten) when still a child.

This institution of the Inner Mission in neighboring Rotenburg had been attempting since 1880 to help persons with physical and mental disabilities. In keeping with the intentions of the founding fathers, they were to be cared for and nursed in medically and pedagogically adequate ways, thereby experiencing that God bestows to all people the same dignity and right to live. The new institution quickly enjoyed great popularity because it represented one answer to the social problems of the industrial age. In the founding year, five wards moved into the first building, and 16 years later, the number had already risen to 150 male and female occupants cared for in this location. By 1930, the Rotenburg Institute, with its nearly 1,000 patients, ranked among the largest institutions of its kind in Germany.

After 1933, this institution of the Inner Mission, too, was affected by the Nazi measures relating to population policy and by the killing of psychologically ill and mentally disabled persons. After proclamation of the "Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” ("Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses”) dated 14 July 1933, at least 335 male and female patients of the Rotenburg Institute were sterilized until 1945.

In Oct. 1939, after Hitler had issued the order to begin preparations for mass killings of terminally ill patients, six special "sanatoria and nursing homes” (Heil- und Pflegeanstalten) operated by the German Reich saw the top secret installation of gas chambers, designated to murder the persons affected by the thousands. However, if possible, they were not to reach the killing centers directly, instead being taken to so-called transit or intermediary institutions and then transported to the killing centers. One of these transit stations was the "Weilmünster State Sanatorium” ("Landesheilanstalt Weilmünster”) near the Hadamar euthanasia killing center in Hessen, which featured a gas chamber and a crematorium.

Ernst Mammen, too, was among the 70 Rotenburg patients transported off to this place on 31 July 1941. His mother was notified about the new place of residence only after the relocation. She was urgently advised against visiting.

When the killings by gassing were officially halted on 24 Aug. 1941, this decision did not mean the end of the killing program. In the following months and years, the dying continued in German "sanatoria and nursing homes.” The most frequent causes of death in this second "phase of euthanasia” were deprivation of food, non-treatment of illnesses, and overdosing of medications. None of the Rotenburg patients transferred to Weilmünster was still alive by May 1945. In the first five months following their transport alone, 45 of the 70 deported persons perished.

On 31 Dec. 1941 – five months after being transported off from Rotenburg – Ernst Mammen closed his eyes forever, at the age of 23.

The conditions prevailing at this hospital at the time emerge from the subsequent report by an institutional pastor: "They [the patients] were given only vegetables, continuing to shrink in the wards, as they were constantly suffering from diarrhea. … Since the beds were rotten through, the dying were lying in the tub in the water. … They were all skin and bones, skin and bones.”


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: Archiv der Rotenburger Werke der Inneren Mission, Akten Nr. 136, 196; Rotenburger Werke (Hrsg.), Zuflucht; Wunder u. a., Kein Halten, 2. Auflage; Peter Sander: Die Landesheilanstalt Weilmünster im Nationalsozialismus, in: Vanja (Hrsg.), Weilmünster.