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Linda Jensen * 1921

Wendenstraße 155 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hammerbrook)

HIER WOHNTE
LINDA JENSEN
JG. 1921
EINGEWIESEN 15.6.1929
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
1943 HEILANSTALT WEILMÜNSTER
"VERLEGT" 22.4.1944
HEILANSTALT HADAMAR
ERMORDET 22.5.1944

Linda Jensen, born on 26 Jan. 1921 in Hamburg, admitted on 15 June 1929 to the Alsterdorf Asylum (Alsterdorfer Anstalten), relocated on 9 Mar. 1943 to Langenhorn, on 26 May 1943 to Weilmünster, and on 22 Apr. 1944 to Hadamar, death there on 22 May 1944

Linda was born on 26 Jan. 1921 in Hamburg and died at the age of 23 in what was then the Hadamar "State Sanatorium” ("Landesheilanstalt” Hadamar) in Nassau. Her mother, Auguste Jensen, was 34 years old at the time of her birth and unmarried, her father was aged 49. In the family of her mother, lung diseases were widespread, and the mother, for her part, suffered from tuberculosis.

No further details are known about the first years of Linda’s life. Her mother worked as an ironer. Linda’s path through "sanatoria and nursing homes” began at the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg) at the age of eight. From there, she was transferred on 15 June 1929 with a diagnosis of "medium-level feeblemindedness” to what was then the Alsterdorf Asylum (Alsterdorfer Anstalten), where she remained for nearly 14 years. The social welfare office covered the cost of the institutional stay, appointing the teacher Willi Bless, residing in Hamm at Am Elisabethgehölz 3, as her guardian.

According to the files, Linda attended the Alsterdorf institutional school for four and a half years, without any success worth mentioning. She listlessly completed the homework she was assigned, repeatedly getting into conflicts with staff. She did not submit and could not be moved at all to adjust to the demands for orderliness and honesty. In order to be able to supervise her constantly, she became a permanent patient in the "observation room” [Wachsaal – a room in which patients were immobilized and underwent continuous therapy], but even there it was impossible to get her under control.

Due to her "early maturity and lack of ability to reason,” it was decided that she had to be sterilized. Merely aged 15, she was subjected to this compulsory operation at Eppendorf hospital on 16 June 1936. At the end of 1937, the managing physician of the institution, Gerhard Kreyenberg, turned to the welfare authority with a short explanation for the necessity of further institutionalization: Linda Jensen, he pointed out, was suffering from "feeblemindedness of a considerable degree,” and except for personal hygiene, she was dependent on others and very difficult to deal with.

When the Reich Ministry of the Interior sent forms to all "sanatoria and nursing homes” for registering the patients, the administration of what was then the Alsterdorf Asylum hesitated filling out and returning them. The registration forms eventually submitted included that of Linda Jensen. The files do not reveal in detail what role the form played for her. To Gerhard Kreyenberg, Linda Jensen no longer appeared tolerable by 1943, which is why he transferred her to what was at the time the Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” (Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Langenhorn). To her mother, he explained this step with the worsening of Linda’s lack of self-control and of her cantankerousness.

On 9 Mar. 1943, she came on a collective transport to Langenhorn, where in women’s ward 11 with nurse Pertzel, she adapted willingly and in a friendly manner to the new surroundings and took on small services, boasting about them, which in turn repelled her fellow patients as well as staff. It was not long before Linda became negligent in doing the housework and taking care of her personal hygiene. Based in an IQ test, she was classified as "extremely feebleminded” ("hochgradig schwachsinning”). In Apr. 1943, Linda was given a three-day institutional leave, against the doctors’ will but at the request of her mother, who had moved to Niendorf by then.

Linda stole bread from her fellow patients, liked to eat sweets, and was impudent. Taken to task by staff, she denied everything. Probably, her uncontrolled and uncontrollable conduct played a role when patients were selected for transfer to Weilmünster in the Oberlahnkreis district.

As the Second World War progressed, "sanatoria and nursing homes” were included in the planning concerning disaster medicine and had to supply beds for sick and wounded persons, as well as victims of air raids; the Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” was to be converted into a general hospital. "Langenhorn” also served as a transit station for male and female patients from North Germany to other institutions, thus becoming a "nerve center of euthanasia.” Room was made by carrying out relocations. On 25 May 1943, 60 women were transported to Weilmünster in the Oberlahnkreis district, to an institution that had served as an intermediate stop on the way to the Hadamar euthanasia killing center and continued to do so after the "stop to euthanasia” as well, a place where even afterward killings through hunger rations continued.

On 9 June, Linda’s mother got word that her daughter had settled in and was employed in the "peeling kitchen;” the idea was "to look and see how she fit in there.” In order to form a more exact impression of her, the message went on, she was required to stay a while longer; that visits were permitted at any time; and that the train station was called Weilmünster-Kurhaus.

Three months later, the institutional administration wrote to Linda’s mother at her request for information:
"Your daughter, who, as I informed you on 9 June 1943, worked on a trial basis in the peeling kitchen, had to be removed from there again. She was lazy there, unmanageable, and very thieving both here and there. Since she is not of any use and steals everything, she must be confined in bed. Physically, she is in good health.” Despite this measure, Linda managed to steal bread again, as a result of which – as a penalty – she "[must sleep] in the floor bed and is fed with gruel as well as administered 1 ccm of apomorphine.”

In February of the following year, Linda received a parcel from her mother, to which she responded herself, and for the period from 1 to 5 Apr. 1944, the mother applied for permission to visit, which was approved, with local hotels named in the reply. Whether this visit ever happened is not known. Three weeks later, Linda was transferred to Hadamar, without her mother being notified about it. Not before 20 May 1944 was the mother notified by the institutional administration that Linda had been transferred there on 22 April and that she was suffering from a serious case of intestinal flu with high fever. Since cardiac insufficiency was an additional condition, risk of death could not be ruled out. A visit was permitted, the message said. After the stop to the mass killings by gassing, in Hadamar, individual killings by food deprivation and by administering lethal injections were carried out. One can assume that Linda Jensen lost her life in this way.

On 22 May 1944, Mrs. Jensen was notified by telegraph of Linda’s death. At the request of her mother, Linda was buried in the institutional cemetery; her mother paid 50 RM (reichsmark) for care of the grave and took a pass on having her daughter’s clothes sent to her.

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 332-5 Standesämter, (StA 22a, 293/1921); 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn, Abl. 1995/1, 31305 Erbgesundheitsgutachten in Akte Anna Bollhagen; 31310; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, V 266; Marien-Lunderup, Regina: Die Anstalten Eichberg und Weilmünster in: Wege in den Tod; Wunder, Michael, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr. Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, 2. Aufl. Hamburg 1988.