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Margarete Heinsen
© Privatbesitz

Margarete Heinsen (née Lampert) * 1903

Rönneburger Straße 32 (Harburg, Wilstorf)

HIER WOHNTE
MARGARETE HEINSEN
GEB. LAMPERT
JG. 1903
EINGEWIESEN 1938
STAATSKRANKENHAUS
LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 1943
HADAMAR
ERMORDET 19.7.1943

Margarete Rosa Heinsen, née Lampert, born on 30 July 1903 in Harburg, committed to the Langenhorn State Hospital on 6 Jan. 1938, "transferred” to the "Landesheilanstalt” Hadamar on 29 June 1943, murdered on 19 July 1943

Rönneburger Strasse 32

Margarete Heinsen was born into a Protestant family in Harburg on 30 July 1903. As a child, she often went her own ways, without intensive contacts to children of the same age. On the one hand, she was very sensitive and extremely irritable, and on the other hand certainly approachable and nothing short of considerate. With remarkable eagerness, she looked after her younger siblings’ wellbeing. In the eyes of her parents and many acquaintances, she was an industrious, thrifty, and assiduous girl.

She finished her schooling without attending the graduating class. Afterward, she earned her living as a factory worker in Harburg, marrying Heinrich Heinsen on 5 June 1926. The marriage produced three children, Irmgard (born on 24 June 1927), Helmut (born on 16 Apr. 1929), and Walter (born on 29 June 1937).

Four weeks after the birth of her youngest child, the mother suffered from serious psychological problems. After a brief stay in the Harburg Hospital, which did not result in any improvement, Margarete Heinsen went for further treatment to the psychiatric ward of Friedrichsberg Hospital on 10 Sept. 1937. However, her health problems did not change there in any way either. The physicians made a diagnosis of "abnormal character,” transferring her for further treatment to the Langenhorn State Hospital on 6 Jan. 1938. The initial examination of the doctors resulted in a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

The Langenhorn State Hospital underwent far-reaching changes after 1933. Along the lines of the new rulers, the institutional costs were reduced: From 4.53 RM (reichsmark) a day per patient in 1933 to 3.75 RM by 1938. Approx. by the same percentage proportion, the expenses for food decreased from just under 0.6 RM in 1933 to 0.49 RM in 1938. The cuts continued even after that – and especially in the war years. Friedrich Ofterdinger, the president of the Hamburg Health and Welfare Authority, justified this policy with the following words:

"The aim is to do away with the impossible state of affairs that the preservation or maintenance of a terminally ill mental patient is more expensive for the state that the maintenance or physical training of a healthy, fully adequate unemployed German national comrade [Volksgenosse]. The intent is to preserve only the essentials, eliminating any luxury.”

One other measure to reduce costs was the increase of occupancy figures. When the Friedrichsberg Mental Hospital was closed down in late 1935, 696 of its previous patients were accommodated in the Langenhorn State Hospital, without any new buildings constructed or any noteworthy numbers of caregivers or nurses being hired there. The total number of beds rose from 2,328 in 1934 to 2,748 in 1939, whereas even urgent repairs were put off repeatedly.

No less serious for many patients were the effects of the "Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” ("Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses”) passed in July 1933. Prof. Gerhard Schäfer, the medical director of the Langenhorn Institution, sang the praises of the law:

"[…] there is no other path for our people to greater heights than that which leads by way of Ausmerze [translator’s note: eradication of mentally ill and other unwanted people]; it goes without saying that we must tread this path cautiously and that by itself, it does not suffice in leading us upward on the ascent far enough.”

Margarete Heinsen was among the at least 445 patients of the Langenhorn State Hospital forcibly sterilized on the basis of this law. In her case, the operation was administered at the Finkenau Women’s Hospital on 14 June 1939.

Although the period of separation from the family became increasingly longer, Margarete Heinsen never gave up hope for a joyful reunion with her husband and the children in all these years. She had to part from that hope only when her marriage was divorced by the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht) on 18 Aug. 1941.

With the outbreak of World War II and the increasing need for hospital beds for wounded soldiers and injured civilians, the Langenhorn practice of shifting "useless” patients off to nearby institutions accelerated. This approach did not require any large-scale adjustments when one year later the first phase of the Nazi program involving the murder of mentally ill persons began. More than 70,000 men and women – including 226 male and female patients of the Langenhorn State Hospital – were murdered using poison gas in six killing centers within Germany from Jan. 1940 until Aug. 1941 – and in a few cases even afterward. In the last week of Aug. 1941, this phase of the National Socialist "euthanasia” program ended.

However, even after termination of this so-called Operation T4, the Nazi policy of murdering patients with disabilities was continued in other ways. Now the victims were killed through deprivation of food, abuse of medications, inadequate medical attention, or insufficient care. The war-related extension of the Langenhorn auxiliary hospital was implemented by way of reducing the beds in the mental ward. Consequently, in order to maintain the entire hospital operation the patients fit for work and easy to instruct became more important all the time. This in turn resulted in increased "selection” of the others and their transport to nearby and even more remote institutions. The most frequent selection pattern was based on poor or non-usable work performance, in combination with medium to high care requirements, conduct classified as difficult or violent, as well as lacking contact to relatives. By far the greatest number of the more than 4,000 patients overall transferred from Langenhorn elsewhere during the Second World War left Hamburg after the gassing murders had been stopped. There is evidence that by the end of 1945, 2,668 of these persons transported off had perished, whereas only 488 survived. It has not been possible so far to clarify the subsequent fate of 599 persons affected.

Along with 49 other women, Margarete Heinsen was transported to the Hadamar "State Sanatorium” ("Landesheilanstalt” Hadamar) on 29 June 1943. After the construction of a gas chamber, this institution had temporarily served as a killing center before. After the partial demolition of the killing facilities, the Nazi "euthanasia” program was continued, however, at Hadamar, too, after a short interruption.

Among the Langenhorn patients, a particularly great number of patients suffered, like Margarete Heinsen, of schizophrenia. Moreover, they were mostly elderly and had distinctive psychological features. Generally, their work performance was below average, whereas the opposite was true for their care requirements.

In terms of its capacity, the Hadamar "State Sanatorium” was designed for the care of approx. 250 persons. After the demolition of the gassing facilities had been finished in mid-1942, 4,817 new patients – the majority of them psychologically ill and mentally handicapped patients – arrived on collective transports from all parts of the German Reich at this institution from 13 Aug. 1942 until 24 Mar. 1945. The patients fit for work worked in all areas of the asylum – in the workshops, the housekeeping area, the agricultural estate, or even at the switchboard. The patients not fit for work, who either arrived at Hadamar emaciated and weakened already or lost strength quickly due to their labor duties, were killed by care personnel by means of drugs. The person responsible for this program of murder was the administrative head, Alfons Klein, who determined who many beds had to be vacated for new occupancies. The managing senior physician, Dr. Adolf Wahlmann, then decided after his daily rounds to which patients the ward nurses and ward caregivers had to administer the deadly dose of medications. If the patients did not perish during the night, they were given a lethal injection in the morning.

Immediately upon the institution accommodating patients again, the deaths reported to the local records office rose significantly. Until the end of Aug. 1942, these deceased persons were still buried in the municipal cemetery. Starting in September, the institution used a property on the hill behind the main building as a new cemetery. From then on, the coffins with the corpses no longer had to be transported through large parts of the town; instead, it was possible to bury them more inconspicuously on the hospital grounds. On the new institutional cemetery, the murdered persons were buried in mass graves. For 4,422 patients, Hadamar was the end of their long ordeal. Their number also included Margarete Rosa Heinsen. On 19 July 1943 – not even one month after her transport from Langenhorn – she closed her eyes forever at the age of just under 40. The fabricated cause of death entered in the death certificate was influenza.

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Staatskrankenhaus Langenhorn, Aufnahmeakte Margarete Rosa Heinsens, Nr. 24593; Gespräch mit Marlis Stresow, geb. Heinsen, und Ulrich Heinsen am 4. 12. 2012; schriftliche Aufzeichnungen Ulrich Heinsens; Michael Wunder, Von der Anstaltsfürsorge zu den Anstaltstötungen, in: Angelika Ebbinghaus /Karsten Linne (Hg.): Kein abgeschlossenes Kapitel. Hamburg im "Dritten Reich", Hamburg 1997; Peter von Rönn, Regina Marien-Lunderup, Michael Wunder, Eveline Sonn, Renate Otto, Marc Billhardt, Georg Dahmen: Wege in den Tod. Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Klaus Böhme/Uwe Lohalm (Hg.), Hamburg 1993; Angelika Ebbinghaus, Heidrun Kaupen-Haas, Karl-Heinz Roth (Hg.): Heilen und Vernichten im Mustergau Hamburg. Bevölkerungs- und Gesundheitspolitik im Dritten Reich, Hamburg 1984; Bettina Winter: "Verlegt nach Hadamar". Die Geschichte einer NS-"Euthanasie"-Anstalt, Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen (Hg.), Kassel 2002.