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Henriette Kloth * 1902

Hasselbrookstraße zwischen Hausnummer 15 und Conventstraße (früher Hasselbrookstraße 11) (Wandsbek, Eilbek)

HIER WOHNTE
HENRIETTE KLOTH
JG. 1902
EINGEWIESEN 1943
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 21.7.1943
HEILANSTALT HADAMAR
ERMORDET 4.5.1944

Sophie Henriette Kloth, born on 17.1.1902 in Hamburg, last admission on 16.5.1943 to the Sanatorium and Nursing home Langenhorn, "transferred" on 21.7.1943 to the Hadamar Institution (Landesheilanstalt Hadamar), murdered there on 4.5.1944.

Hasselbrookstraße between house number 15 and Conventstraße (formerly Hasselbrookstraße 11)

Sophie Henriette Kloth was born on 17 Jan. 1902 in Hamburg. She was a daughter of Hinrich Alwinus Kloth and his wife Catharina Caroline Anna, née Höppner. Sophie Henriette's father was a Protestant, born on 28 April 1863 in the village of Sagau northeast of Eutin. He was a shoemaker. Her mother, also Protestant, born on 3 Oct. 1864 in the village of Steenkrütz northeast of Bad Segeberg, worked as a maid at the time of the marriage. The couple married in Altona on 16 Nov. 1888 and initially lived in the basement at Waterloostraße 10 in Altona, and then from 1893 at Waterloostraße 19 on the ground floor. Hinrich Kloth opened a shoe and boot shop at Schulterblatt 145 in the St. Pauli district in 1894.

The marriage of Catharina and Hinrich Kloth is said to have produced a total of eight children, seven of them can be traced in the birth or death registers. Their son Friedrich Wilhelm, born in 1899, died as an infantryman in France on 21 July 1918 during the First World War.

Apparently Hinrich Kloth gave up his business after a few years. The family is listed in the Hamburg address book from 1899, first in Eilbek, Hirschgraben 7/9, and from 1901 in Papenstraße 77, also in Eilbek. Sophie Henriette Kloth was born there. Her call name was Henriette. The family often moved in the following years, but stayed in the Eilbek district.

Henriette Kloth attended school up to the first grade (the first grade was the highest elementary school grade at that time) and then she worked as a nanny. From 1924 she was employed at the Postal Cheque Office.

In about 1920 Hinrich Kloth, who had become a master shoemaker in the meantime, started his own business again. He set up a workshop at Ritterstraße 76, whilst the family, including Henriettes brother Heinrich, lived at Hasselbrookstraße 80. According to the Hamburg address book, he tried to develop a construction company from here.

On 11 Feb. 1928, Henriette Kloth's father died in the Friedrichsberg State Hospital. The widow Catharina Kloth continued to live with her son at Hasselbrookstraße 80 until her death on 18 Jan. 1934. As far as we know, Henriette also lived there.

In 1929, Henriette Kloth seems to have shown symptoms of exhaustion for the first time. Based on this diagnosis, she is said to have been in a sanatorium for four weeks in 1929.

From October 1935 to June 1940, Henriette Kloth lived in the Care Home Oberaltenallee in the Uhlenhorst district, whether as an employee or as a resident has not been recorded. In November 1940, she was admitted to the Psychiatric and Mental Clinic of the Hanseatic University in Hamburg-Eilbek (previously the Friedrichsberg State Hospital) with a nervous disorder and discharged again after five days. As she later reported, she then worked in various companies as a packer. Sometimes she suddenly broke into tears and could then work no longer. She often felt exhausted. Because she was not working efficient enough, she lost her jobs again and again.

From the beginning of August 1941, Henriette Kloth was again a patient in the Eilbek clinic. Apparently because of the crying fits, the doctors assumed that she suffered from depression. From 15 Sept. 1941 she was employed on a trial basis as a housekeeper at the Diaconal Institution Anscharhöhe, Ansgar House, until the end of October. Henriette Kloth was perceived as a quiet, modest person who was not up to the tasks. It was suggested to find a job for her with more mechanical activities such as peeling potatoes and cleaning vegetables.

After having left Anscharhöhe - we do not know the exact date - she found accommodation at Hasselbrookstraße 11, probably as a subtenant, and a job as a housemaid, which she had to give up because the work was "too hard" for her. She lost the subsequent job in a factory, again as a packer, after she had to report sick at Christmas 1941. She slept badly, became tired very quickly and continued to cry often. With the diagnosis "nervous disorder", Henriette Kloth was again admitted to the clinic in Eilbek on 10 Jan. 1942. There she was perceived as friendly and approachable. She had talked continually and without inhibitions. As soon as her illness was mentioned, she was tearful and depressed.

On 19 Jan. 1942, Henriette Kloth was transferred to the Sanatorium and Nursing Home Langenhorn, where she remained until 26 Aug. 1942. Here she was described as depressed, weak and powerless. However, she was energetic enough to urge the institution's doctor Saupe to release her from the institution:
"Dear Doctor Saupe!
Since I have been here for more than half a year now and I would now finally like to be discharged, I would l politely ask you to try to get me released, because what I can do here, I have been able to do outside for a long time. Since I don't want to bother my relatives with this and I only have one other lady outside who would like to have me back, I would like to ask you, Doctor Saupe, to arrange the further. Finally I have to think about earning money again. I don't want to be a burden on the Hamburg state all the time, but I want to relieve it by working hard again outside. [...] In asking for your reply in this regard, I sign with German greetings Henriette Kloth".

Henriette Kloth's condition was noted as "improved" when she was released from the institution in Langenhorn in August 1942. She found work again, last with the manufacturer of technical leather goods K. Pöschel at Ulmenstraße 18 in Winterhude. But there, too, she was unable to gain a permanent foothold. On 16 May 1943 Henriette Kloth was again committed to Langenhorn, this time by the police according to § 22 Hmb. Verhältnisgesetz. (According to this law, which originated in 1879 and was amended in 1923, the police authorities were authorized to "take persons into custody" if their own protection or the maintenance of public security and order or the prevention of danger to other persons made this necessary). With the exception of "intransigence", we do not know what justified Henriette Kloth's second committal to the Langenhorn institution.

A few weeks later, on 1 July 1943, Henriette Kloth was transferred with a transport of 50 women from the Sanatorium and Nursing Home Langenhorn to the Sanatorium and Nursing Home Hadamar near Limburg on the Lahn. Until the end of August 1941, the Hadamar institution was one of the six killing centres in the German Reich where sick people were murdered with gas. From August 1942 onwards, the murders of physically or mentally handicapped or mentally ill people continued, but no longer with gas, but through injections administered by doctors and nurses, overdosed medication, and by systematic and deliberate starvation.

A note in Henriette Kloth's medical file, dated 3 May 1944, stated that she had "deteriorated rapidly". She died the next day. The cause of death was noted as "mental illness, decay, heart failure". It can be assumed that Henriette Kloth did not die of natural causes.

Translation: Steve Robinson

Stand: August 2023
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg; StaHH 332-5 Standesämter 6268 Geburtsregister 878/1891 Anna Catharina Dorothea Kloth, 6277 Geburtsregister 3364/1892 Detlef Johann Heinrich Kloth, 6258 Geburtsregister 2330/1889 Minna Marie Catharina Kloth, 13179 Geburtsregister 924/1899 Friedrich Wilhelm Kloth, Geburtsregister 277/1900 Heinrich Johannnes Gustav Kloth, 13827 Geburtsregister 136/1902 Sophie Henriette Kloth, 5203 Sterberegister 2193/1889 Minna Marie Catharina Kloth, 6819 Sterberegister 1078/1896 Heinrich Kloth, 7068 Sterberegister 150/1928 Heinrich Alwinus Kloth, 7163 Sterberegister 14/1934 Catharina Caroline Anna Kloth, 5905 Heiratsregister 1175/1888 Hinrich Alwinus Kloth/ Catharina Caroline Anna Höppner, 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1990/1 29532 Kloth Henriette. Peter von Rönn u.a., Wege in den Tod, Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 347 ff., 492.