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Walter Müller * 1911

Reeseberg 53 (Harburg, Wilstorf)

HIER WOHNTE
WALTER MÜLLER
JG. 1911
EINGEWIESEN 1924
ROTENBURGER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 1941
HEILANSTALT WEILMÜNSTER
ERMORDET 14.11.1941

Walter Müller, born on 9 Aug. 1911 in Harburg, committed to the Rotenburg Institute (Rotenburger Anstalten), transferred to the "Weilmünster State Sanatorium” ("Landesheilanstalt Weilmünster”) murdered there on 14 Nov. 1941

Wilstorf quarter, Reeseberg 53

Many farmhouses still characterized the townscape of Wilstorf, when the first multi-story residential buildings were already constructed on Reeseberg at the eastern edge of the town in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The new residents worked at the nearby jute spinning and weaving mill, built on Ferdinandstrasse (today Nöldekestrasse) in 1883, or at one of the numerous companies in Harburg. When Walter Müller was born 23 after the incorporation of Wilstorf and Heimfeld into the Prussian factory city of Harburg, the population of this industrial location had risen to more than 67,000 people.

On 2 Aug. 1924, at the age of 13, Walter Müller was committed to the Rotenburg Institute in the neighboring chief district town on the Wümme River based on a diagnosis of "idiocy” ("Idiotie”). In the years after the First World War, this institution of the Inner Mission developed into one of the major centers at the time in the German Reich for epileptics as well as mentally disabled and psychologically disturbed persons. This time saw an intense debate in scientific circles and in the public about the value and dignity of "mentally ill and crippled people.” The advocates of Social Darwinism judged humans exclusively by their usefulness and value for the "national community” (Volksgemeinschaft).

The National Socialists took up this Social Darwinist thinking, fusing it with their dogma on the primacy of the "Aryan-Nordic race” into a dreadful political program. Even in his work Mein Kampf, Hitler already advocated the preventive destruction of all so-called "underachieving individuals” (Leistungsschwache), who in his view constituted only a burden on the "nation as a whole” ("Volksganze”). One first step toward implementing this program was passage of the "Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” ("Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses”) dated 14 July 1933. Based on this legal provision, 335 inmates of the Rotenburg Institute overall were forcibly sterilized from 1933 until 1945.

Even more serious for the Rotenburg patients, too, were the consequences of the so-called "euthanasia decree” issued by Adolf Hitler shortly after the start of World War II, which provided for the mass murder of terminally ill persons. They were to be killed in six special "sanatoria and nursing homes” (Heil- und Pflegeanstalten) equipped with gas chambers. In order to manage the process more smoothly and to conceal it to the outside world as much as possible, the victims were usually transported to intermediate stops near the killing centers specifically assigned for this purpose, where they spent several days or weeks before being murdered.

One of these transit stations was the "Weilmünster State Sanatorium” ("Landesheilanstalt Weilmünster”) near the Hadamar euthanasia killing center in Hessen. One person also among the 70 Rotenburg patients transferred there on 30 July 1941 as "persons in need of intensive care” or "patients without any prospects of recovery,” respectively, was 30-year-old Walter Müller from Harburg. In Weilmünster, those affected were treated as "transit patients” and separated from the other inmates. However, they were not transferred onward to Hadamar in the following weeks because the killings using gas had been ceased by then. The chances for survival of the patients and disabled persons shunted off hardly improved because of this though, because subsequently they had to endure drug abuse, failure to provide medical treatment, deprivation of food, and criminal neglect at this former transit camp. Just how miserable these living conditions were is demonstrated by the fact that none of the Rotenburg patients survived. The majority died even before the turn of the year.

Walter Müller’s life ended on 14 Nov. 1941. Since 2003, a memorial stone on the forest cemetery in Weilmünster commemorates the persons murdered in the institution during the Nazi period.


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; Sander, Landesheilanstalt.