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Margot Posner * 1920

Hansastraße 28 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
MARGOT POSNER
JG. 1920
EINGEWIESEN 1940
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
BRANDENBURG
ERMORDET 23.9.1940
"AKTION T4"

Margot Posner, born on 11 Oct. 1920 in Hamburg, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Stolperstein in Hamburg-Harvestehude, at Hansastrasse 28

Margot Posner was the older of the two children of Max Eduard Posner, born on 3 Feb. 1889 in Altona, and Käthe Sidonie (called Hede), née Frensdorff, born on 31 Dec. 1889. Margot was born on 11 Oct. 1920 in Hamburg. Her brother Edgar Harald Paul was born on 15 May 1927. The parents were of the Jewish faith.

Max Eduard worked in the company of his father Eduard Posner, born on 12 Sept. 1855, who was a major finery goods wholesaler, i.e., he traded in woman’s hats, flowers, and plumes. The company employed 200 employees and 18 traveling salespersons.

The Posner couple had been married in 1919 and had been given a house at Hansastrasse 28 by Max Eduard’s father at their wedding, as well as a considerable dowry by Käthe Sidonie’s father. Max Eduard also took over the business from his father at that time. The family was doing very well materially.

Margot had been admitted to what was then the Alsterdorf Asylum (Alsterdorfer Anstalten) on 10 Sept. 1930 at the age of ten because she suffered from a mental disability and needed full care.

After 1933, the Alsterdorf Asylum developed into a Nazi model operation where eugenics ideas were supported and, associated with them, forced sterilization as "prevention of unworthy life” ("Verhütung unwerten Lebens”). It was only a matter of time before the persecution of the Jews in the German Reich also led to corresponding measures at the Alsterdorf Asylum. A ruling by the Reich Audit Office (Reichsfinanzhof) of 18 Mar. 1937 served as a pretext for preparing the discharge of all Jews from the Alsterdorf Asylum. Pastor Friedrich Karl Lensch, the director of the Alsterdorf Asylum, deduced from the verdict the danger of the loss of non-profit status under tax law if Jews continued to stay in the institution. A letter dated 3 Sept. 1937 to the Hamburg Welfare Authority contained 18 names of "Jewish charges who are accommodated here at the expense of the welfare authority.” Among them was the name of Margot Posner.

According to an entry on her "hereditary health card,” she was initially transferred from Alsterdorf to the Oberaltenallee care home (Versorgungsheim Oberaltenallee) on 31 Oct. 1938. Like her, 14 other residents from Alsterdorf were also affected by this measure. Almost all of them were then transferred to the Farmsen care home. Margot Posner, on the other hand, probably remained in Oberaltenallee. In Apr. 1940, the Alsterdorf Asylum was eventually able to rid itself of the last Jewish resident.

Margot’s parents last saw their daughter at Barmbek General Hospital in 1939. It cannot be ruled out that her admission there was connected with the hereditary health law (Erbgesundheitsgesetz), according to which it was possible to forcibly sterilize anyone who was considered having a "hereditary disease.”

In the spring/summer of 1940, the "euthanasia” headquarters in Berlin, located at Tiergartenstrasse 4, planned a special operation aimed against Jews in public and private sanatoriums and nursing homes. It had the Jewish persons living in the institutions registered and moved together in what were officially so-called collection institutions. The Hamburg-Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt” Hamburg-Langenhorn) was designated the North German collection institution. All institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg were ordered to move the Jews living in their facilities there by 18 Sept. 1940.

Margot Posner arrived in Langenhorn on 18 Sept. 1940. On 23 Sept. 1940, she was transported to Brandenburg/Havel with a further 135 patients from North German institutions. The transport reached the city in the Mark (March) on the same day. In the part of the former penitentiary converted into a gas-killing facility, the patients were immediately driven into the gas chamber and killed with carbon monoxide. Only Ilse Herta Zachmann escaped this fate at first (see corresponding entry).

On the birth register entry of Margot Posner, it was noted that the records office Cholm II registered her death under number 468/1941. Those murdered in Brandenburg, however, were never in Cholm (German) or Chelm (Polish), a town east of Lublin. The former Polish sanatorium there no longer existed after SS units had murdered almost all patients on 12 Jan. 1940. Also, there was no German records office in Cholm. Its fabrication and the use of postdated dates of death served to disguise the killing operation and at the same time enabled the authorities to claim higher care expenses for periods extended accordingly.

Margot Posner’s parents were apparently not informed of their daughter’s death. Max Eduard Posner, meanwhile going by the name of Max Parrey, justified his 1955 application to declare Margot dead by stating that his daughter had been deported to an "unknown place” and that no sign of life had been received from her since then.

When power was transferred to the National Socialists in 1933, Max Eduard Posner sold the house at Hansastrasse 28 and moved to Isestrasse 49. As he later reported, he was forced to resign from his honorary positions in child welfare and as Master of the "Masonic Lodge to the Fraternal Chain Elbe” ("Freimaurerloge zur Bruderkette Elbe”) on Welkerstrasse. He was forced out of his company. Eventually, he had to work as a traveling salesman at his former company. The new owner, Emil Meier, a former traveling salesman in Max Eduard Posner’s company, continued to run the business until 1953. Max Eduard Posner’s attempt to set up a sheet metal factory in Lokstedt also failed due to fraudulent actions by the managing director by the name of Mohr.

At the beginning of 1939, the Gestapo arrested Max Eduard Posner and locked him up for one night in the Hütten prison in Hamburg-Neustadt. The following day, he was beaten and tortured in the Stadthaus, the Hamburg Gestapo headquarters. Max Eduard Posner later reported: "Three officers worked on me until I collapsed. All I remember was that after about 30 days, I was driven by two officers to the duty-free port (Freihafen), where another interrogation took place. Very weak, I was released the same day. When I left, I was told that my father was waiting for me in another room. My old father (85 years old) had been picked up by police from my private home, and I was told that my issue had been settled, that there had been a case of mistaken identity.” It did not matter that Max Eduard Posner had participated as a soldier in the First World War and had received decorations. His decorations and honorary certificates were taken from him when he was arrested by the Gestapo.

Max Eduard, his wife Käthe Sidonie, and their son Edgar Harald Paul were able to leave Germany on 19 Nov. 1939. They fled to the United States. A memorial plaque in front of the tomb of the Posner/Frensdorff family at the Ohlsdorf-Ilandkoppel cemetery commemorates Margot Posner and other Holocaust victims of this family: Julius Frensdorff, Rebecca Frensdorff, née Katz, Max Frensdorff, Ilse Frensdorff, née Fallek, Louis Frensdorff, Lilly Frensdorff, née Ballin, Ehrich Frensdorff, Inge Leven, née Frensdorf, Alfred Leven, Tana Leven (see corresponding entries).

A Stolperstein at Hansastrasse 28 in Hamburg-Harvestehude commemorates Margot Posner.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2020
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; 9; AB; StaH 133-1 III Staatsarchiv III, 3171-2/4 U.A. 4, Liste psychisch kranker jüdischer Patientinnen und Patienten der psychiatrischen Anstalt Langenhorn, die aufgrund nationalsozialistischer "Euthanasie"-Maßnahmen ermordet wurden, zusammengestellt von Peter von Rönn, Hamburg (Projektgruppe zur Erforschung des Schicksals psychisch Kranker in Langenhorn); 332-5 Standesämter 6256 Geburtsregister Nr. 505/1889 Max Eduard Posner, 8735 Heiratsregister Nr. 798/1919 Posner/Frensdorff; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 43574 Posner, 11070 M. Parrey; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.1939 bis 27.1.1941; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Aufnahmebuch, Erbgesundheitskarteikarte Margot Posner; Auskunft des Standesamts Hamburg-Mitte über Beischreibungen auf dem Geburtsregistereintrag von Margot Posner. Wunder, Michael/Genkel, Ingrid/Jenner, Harald, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr. Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 247ff.
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