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Curt Justus Neisel * 1910

Beim Schlump 2 A (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
CURT JUSTUS
NEISEL
JG. 1910
EINGEWIESEN 1939
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 28.11.1941
HEILANSTALT TIEGENHOF
ERMORDET 5.2.1942

Curt Justus Neisel, born on 20 June 1910 in Hamburg, admitted to the then Alsterdorf Asylum (Alsterdorfer Anstalten) on 13 July 1939, "transferred” on 27 Nov. 1941 from the "Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Langenhorn”) to the Tiegenhof "Gau Sanatorium” (Gauheilanstalt Tiegenhof) near Gnesen (today Gniezno in Poland), murdered on 5 Feb. 1942.

Beim Schlump 2a

Curt Neisel, born on 20 June 1910 in Hamburg, was the second child of Johann Justus Neisel (born on 25 July 1871, died on 4 Apr. 1954) and Anna Dorothea (Dora), née Huse, widowed name Düwel (born on 11 May 1872). After Curt’s older sister Wally was born in 1909, his parents married in Hamburg on 2 December of that year.

His father came from Frankfurt/Main and worked as a lamplighter. He had a son from his first marriage, born in 1903, who lived with his mother after the divorce. Curt’s mother was native of Mühlhausen in Thuringia and the daughter of a churchyard servant. After her first husband Johannes Amandus Carl Theodor Düwel died in 1904 at the age of 34 years, she ran a knitting mill at Hegestrasse 6 while still having to care for her two small children from her first marriage.

When Curt was born on 20 June 1910, his parents lived at Löwenstrasse 10, and there is no record of what his childhood and youth were like. On 13 July 1939, Curt, by then 29 years old, was committed to what was then Alsterdorf Asylum (today the Protestant Alsterdorf Foundation). When Curt Neisel was admitted, he lived with his parents at Beim Schlump 2a House 3 (third floor) in Eimsbüttel. At this location, a Stolperstein commemorates him.
Perhaps his mother had already fallen ill in 1939; she died on 21 Oct. 1940 following a heart attack.

The few details we know about Curt Neisel are taken from a file card that was created for the Hamburg Health Pass Archive, which was established in 1934 for the purpose of a "hereditary biological inventory” of the population. It contains the diagnosis of "imbecility lower limit, blindness.” The "course of the disease” is described as follows: "This is a pat.[ient] of low mental standing, terminally ill, who had only primitive relations to his environment and who required complete care. As a result, he caused difficulties regarding nursing. Was unfit for work.”

Curt Neisel was reported to the "euthanasia” headquarters located at Berlin’s Tiergartenstrasse 4 on 15 Oct. 1940 as part of the T4 questionnaire campaign, which was used to record the potential victims of the patient murders. Based on the information in the questionnaire, "doctors” decided without ever having seen the patients, who ought to be "treated” according to the Nazi ideology. This assessment was a death sentence carried out in one of the killing centers equipped with gas chambers. A decision of the "euthanasia” headquarters regarding Curt Neisel is not known.

Curt Neisel was transferred on 28 July 1941 to the "Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home” – the collection and transit institution of the "T4” operation in northern Germany – and on 27 Nov. 1941, he was transferred further with about 60 to 70 persons to the Tiegenhof "Gau Sanatorium” near Gnesen (Gniezno/Poland).

As in other institutions, in the psychiatric institution founded in 1894 in occupied Poland, the state-organized murder of disabled people and people with mental illness by starvation rations and overdosed medication continued even after the official termination of the "euthanasia” killings in Aug. 1941. Curt Neisel died in Tiegenhof on 5 Feb. 1942.

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

Stand: September 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 332-5 Standesämter 5422 u 1450/1940; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9534 u 637/1909; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6422 u 120/1900; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 5422 u 1450/1940; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13503 u 175/1901; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8561 u 366/1893; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6858 u 907/1904; Archiv der Evangelischen Stiftung Alsterdorf, Erbgesundheitskarteikarte über Curt Neisel; Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr. Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, 3. Aufl. Hamburg 2016.
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