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Erna Schuchardt, 1937
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Erna Schuchardt * 1930

Michaelisstraße 38 vor Michaelispassage (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
ERNA SCHUCHARDT
JG. 1930
EINGEWIESEN 1935
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 1943
HEIL- UND PFLEGEANSTALT
AM STEINHOF/WIEN
ERMORDET 24.5.1944

Erna Hermine Charlotte Schuchardt, born 23 Mar. 1930 in Altona, committed 2 Dec. 1935 to the then Alsterdorf Asylum, moved 16 Aug. 1943 to Wagner von Jauregg Mental and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna, died on 24 May 1944

Michaelisstraße in front of the stairs to the Michaelis Passage (Paradieshof 8)

Erna Schuchardt was born prematurely, the youngest of three children. She was considered weak and had to be fed through a feeding tube. One sister had already died of a "twisting of the intestine” at three months of age. According to her father, the machine builder Albert Schuchardt (born 22 Apr. 1887), from the beginning his daughter developed more slowly than other children. After contracting whooping cough and chickenpox, doctors at Eppendorf University Hospital diagnosed her with general arrested developmental in 1934. At the age of four and a half, Erna was described as a very small child who could hardly speak and made no attempt at walking. Since the doctors felt her legs were abnormally weak, they were placed in plaster casts for four months which exacerbated her poor condition.

Her mother Anna Schuchardt, née Fährmann (born 26 Jan. 1897) had taken care of her until that time, but when her mother became ill, the medical department of the welfare authority registered Erna on 2 Dec. 1935 to be admitted to the then Alsterdorf Asylum (today Alsterdorf Evangelical Foundation) due to a "developmental disorder of cerebral functions”. Anna Schuchardt died on 9 Dec. 1935 at Bergedorf Hospital.

At Alsterdorf, Erna was described as a quiet child. At the start of July 1939 she then grew somewhat more lively. She started to talk and had also learned to walk on her "weak legs”. On 1 Apr. 1943 one of her last evaluations read: "In the garden she leans on the fence or against the wall and watches the other children playing. We often can’t get her to move, she cries and trembles throughout her whole body. When she walks, she bends her upper body far back and stiffly moves her legs. Pat.[ient] can feed and undress herself. She needs help getting dressed and with personal hygiene.”

While Erna Schuchardt was previously considered clean and toilet trained, that eventually changed. She was moved, perhaps because she was thought to require too much care or because she was regarded as too "lowly”, as it was called in the medical jargon of the time. Signed by the managing senior physician Gerhard Kreyenberg, the last entry in her file ends with the standard explanation: "Moved to Vienna due to extensive damage to the asylum from air raids.”

Among the 228 female patients who were moved to the Wagner-von-Jauregg Mental and Nursing Home on 16 Aug. 1943 were, in addition to Erna, 25 other children. Only two of them survived the end of the war at the Vienna facility.

Erna Schuchardt died on 24 May 1944, allegedly from pulmonary tuberculosis following a sustained fever. She was only 14 years old.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: June 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 332-5- Standesämter 10499 u 235/1935; Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Patientenakten der Alsterdorfer Anstalten, V 238 Erna Schuchardt; Wunder/Genkel/Jenner: schiefen Ebene.