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F. K. Heinrich Schrage * 1893

Hofweg 6 (Hamburg-Nord, Uhlenhorst)

KZ Fuhlsbüttel
ermordet am 12.9.1944

Heinrich Friedrich Karl Schrage, born 9/30/1893, found hanged on 9/12/1944 at Fuhlsbüttel prison

Hofweg 6

Karl Schrage was born September 30th, 1893 as the son of the tailor Carl Ludwig and his wife Emma, née Arend. The family lived in Kassel, at Schäfergasse 39. Karl Schrage left home when he was 18 and first took a room as a sub-tenant, making his living as a metalworker and assembly fitter. In 1913, he moved to Saarlouis. When World War I broke out, he joined the army. Wounded in 1915, he spent time in a military hospital and returned home to his parents at Giessbergstrasse 38 in Kassel. On September 17th, 1921, he married Annemarie Thiessen from Marne in Schleswig-Holstein in her hometown. Annemarie was four years younger than he was; the couple first settled in Kassel.

Annemarie und Karl Schrage moved to Hamburg on March 1st, 1929, to Vierländer Strasse 39 in Rothenburgsort. In 1935, Karl Schrage opened a gas station at Markmannstrasse 125, just around the corner. In February 1940, the Schrages, who had taken in the two orphaned children of a cousin of Annemarie’s, moved to a larger apartment on the 2nd floor of Hofweg 6 in Hamburg-Uhlenhorst.

On September 9th, 1944, Karl Schrage was arrested at his gas station and taken to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. The same thing happened to his brother Adolf, who lived in Wellingsbüttel (q.v.). On September 12th, Karl Schrage was found hanged in his cell. Exactly one month later, on October 12th, 1944, his brother Adolf was found in the same situation. In both cases, the prison medical officer established "strangulation, suicide” as cause of death.

After the war, Karl Schrage’s widow reported that he had only shortly before been discharged from the hospital following a serious kidney operation. She had been visiting friends in Marne the day he was arrested, and felt unease when her husband did not answer the telephone on that and the following days. Having returned to Hamburg, she searched for him, and finally learned of his death. After the war, she filed a claim for compensation, because her husband had been an opponent of the Nazi regime; she supported her claim by written statements from friends of her late husband, who stated that Karl Schrage had made derogatory comments about the government. The compensation agency, however, doubted that that had been the reason for Schrage’s arrest refusing to recognize him as a politically persecuted person, and granted no payment.

The preserved records of the circumstances of Karl Schrage’s death give no indication of a political reason for his death. Such accusations would have been "undermining of military morale”, "treachery” or "defeatism.” Instead, it says: "the proprietor of the big gas station in Hamburg-Rothenburgsort, Karl Schrage, born 9/30/93 in Kassel, resident in Hamburg, Hofweg 6, was arrested by the Gestapo on 9/9/44 for fuel sabotage. In his interrogation on 9/11/1944, he admitted that he, in collusion his brother Adolf Schrage, a technical employee of the Klöckner company [… ] had repeatedly received substantial quantities of gasoline, which he traded for rationed groceries with various people. Karl Schrage hanged himself in his cell in the night from 9/11 to 9/12/1944.”

It remains unclear to what extent these accusations held true. One cannot totally exclude a political context the Gestapo might not have realized.

However, there can be no doubt that Adolf and Karl Schrage did not receive treatment according to the law. Emil Schacht, who later married the widow of Karl Schrage, gave an account of an alleged eyewitness who appeared at the door of the couple’s home in 1950: "The man declared he had been a guard at the Fuhlsbüttel police prison and that the cell occupied by Herr Schrage had been in his sector [… ] and continued that, one day, he had found the prisoner Herr Schrage hanged from the doorpost with a string. He could not have been dead for long. Asked if the prisoners had been abused, the eyewitness declared that abuse occurred, but he himself had not actively taken part in it. Rather, other guards had […] herded the prisoners down into the cellar and severely beaten them with truncheons. Herr Schrage was among the mistreated. [… ] The eyewitness was unable to answer my question regarding the cause of Schrage’s death. Neither could he tell me where the string used for the hanging had come from. Obviously, a prisoner was not allowed to possess string."

Things may have happened like this, or something like this. Brutal mistreatment was daily routine at Fuhlsbüttel police prison. Karl Schrage may have been driven to suicide by this abuse. However, it is equally possible that he was beaten to death by the thugs on guard duty at Fuhlsbüttel prison.


Translation by Peter Hubschmid 2018
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: January 2019
© Carmen Smiatacz/Ulrike Sparr

Quellen: StaHH 332-5, Personenstandsunterlagen, 9953 und 1373/1944; Diercks, Herbert, Gedenkbuch "KOLA-FU", S. 37; Stadtarchiv Kassel; StaHH 351-11, AfW, Abl. 2008/1, 19217; StaHH 331-5, Polizeibehörde – Unnatürliche Sterbefälle, 3 1944 1420; StaHH 331-5, Polizeibehörde – Unnatürliche Sterbefälle, 1193; Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure; Garbe, Institutionen des Terrors; Hochmuth, Gestapo-Gefängnis Fuhlsbüttel.