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Siegfried Hirschfeld * 1880

Husumer Straße 18 (Hamburg-Nord, Hoheluft-Ost)

HIER WOHNTE
SIEGFRIED HIRSCHFELD
JG. 1880
DEPORTIERT 1941
MINSK
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Husumer Straße 18:
Jettchen "Jenny" Hirschfeld, Heinz Hirschfeld

Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld, born on 16 June 1915 in Hamburg, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the euthanasia killing center in Brandenburg/Havel

Stolperstein in Hamburg-Hoheluft-Ost, at Husumer Strasse 18

Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld was born on 16 June 1915 in Hamburg as the son of the Jewish couple Siegfried and Jenny Hirschfeld, née Tannenbaum.

Siegfried Hirschfeld was born in 1880 in Kassel, Jenny Hirschfeld in 1879 in Wanfried, a small town in Hessen, directly on today’s border to Thuringia. Ludwig Heinz’ brother Herbert was also born in Hamburg, on 15 Jan. 1921.

The couple had immigrated to Hamburg years before Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld was born. The exact date is not known. They initially lived at Wendenstrasse 43 in the Hammerbrook quarter. Siegfried Hirschfeld initially worked as a sales clerk, later as an independent merchant trading in linens, while Jenny Hirschfeld cared for the family as a housewife. About 1917, the family moved to Heidestrasse 21 (today Heider Strasse) in Hoheluft-Ost and about 1927 to Husumer Strasse 18.

Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld attended the Talmud Tora School on Grindelhof. He later described himself as a reasonably good student, leaving school after grade 10.

In 1928, the family had to move again, this time to the Lämmersieth in Barmbek-Nord. By then, Ludwig Heinz’ father, Siegfried Hirschfeld, ran his business at Adlerstrasse 18 in Barmbek-Süd.

After finishing school, Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld tried his hand as an apprentice in several professions, e.g., at a wine importing company, at a nursery, and as an electrical precision mechanic. He found himself listless and sluggish. He never stayed in one place for long, which meant he was eventually left without any vocational qualification. When he was admitted to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg) in Mar. 1935, he reported that he had never had real friends or a female acquaintance. Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld, who lived with his parents, had a rather tense relationship with his mother, who was described as quite resolute.

The Friedrichsberg physician Hermann Josephy had admitted Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld to the state hospital because of "nervous complaints.” During the anamnesis, the following was noted about Ludwig Heinz’s father: "A man who easily turns away from his goal with all the unpleasant characteristics of his race.” The trigger for the admission was probably that Ludwig Heinz had once again left a trainee position, "hung out” in a park with unemployed people, and played chess. As Siegfried Hirschfeld reported about his son when he was admitted, he had never been seriously ill. But he was said to have hardly made contact with other people and always remained by himself. Jenny Hirschfeld told of many "senseless actions” of her son. He "slept during the day or stayed in bed, respectively, ran through all the rooms at night, hammered around at cabinets, into the sides of which he drove wooden pegs, painted tin cans black, experimented – tough without rhyme or reason – with gas pipes and electrical cables, occasionally even got small fits of raving madness, thereupon, accompanied by a lady he knew, calling on a non-medical practitioner on Steindamm whose medicine he did not take, however.” To the admitting physician, it was clear from the mother’s accounts "that she does not consider him to be mentally healthy either...”

The reports of the parents and Ludwig Heinz’ own account were sufficient for the following assessment: "The need for sterilization, which probably applies, will have to be checked before discharge.”

Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld had been in Friedrichsberg for a little more than four months when he sent a desperate letter to his father on 4 Aug. 1935, asking him to arrange for his transfer to the Israelite sanatorium and nursing home (Heil- und Pflegeanstalt) in Bendorf-Sayn. The letter is still contained in Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld’s patient file today and it probably never reached his father. Nevertheless, it was officially checked whether a transfer was possible. Allegedly, there was no vacancy in Bendorf-Sayn.

Apparently, Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld was a religious man. This is supported not only by his wish to be transferred to Bendorf-Sayn, but also by his refusal to eat non-kosher food, with the result that he was administered special food with a tube.

In Nov. 1935, the Friedrichsberg doctors regarded Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld as no longer curable and transferred him to the Hamburg-Langenhorn State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn) on 5 November. From there, he was sent to the Oberaltenallee care home (Versorgungsheim Oberaltenallee) on 10 Jan. 1936. But even at the care home, staff wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible. A transfer to the Farmsen care home was forbidden, however, because Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld had to be fed with a stomach tube. No other solution emerged either, so that he had to stay in the Oberaltenallee care home.

In Sept. 1937, the Oberaltenallee care home pushed for Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld’s sterilization. After a corresponding decision by the so-called Hereditary Health Court (Erbgesundheitsgericht), the surgery was carried out between 4 and 11 Sept. 1937 at Barmbek General Hospital.

Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld wanted to escape from the care home and on 18 Oct. 1938, he set out on his way to relatives in Hannover on a stolen bicycle. There, police arrested him and transferred him to the Hamburg police prison.

Back at the Oberaltenallee care home on 24 October, Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld attacked the nursing staff and his mother during her visit. The relationship with his mother was obviously still very strained. On the same day, the care home got rid of him, committing him to the facility in Langenhorn, which had since been renamed "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt”).

Five months later, on 24 Jan. 1940, Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld was transferred to the Strecknitz "sanatorium” in Lübeck, where his father visited him twice, the last time on 8 Aug. 1940. On 12 September, his discharge from the institution seemed on the horizon. The institution in Strecknitz wrote to the Jewish Religious Organization (Jüdischer Religionsverband) Hamburg that "Heinz Hirschfeld does not need permanent institutional treatment.”

However, Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld’s fate was already sealed. As part of a special operation planned by the "euthanasia” headquarters in Berlin, at Tiergartenstrasse 4, against Jews in public and private sanatoriums and nursing homes, the Reich Ministry of the Interior ordered those from Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg to be concentrated in the Hamburg-Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt” Hamburg-Langenhorn) by 18 Sept. 1940 and to have them transported on 23 Sept. 1940 to so-called the "Brandenburg State Asylum” ("Landespflegeanstalt Brandenburg”) in Brandenburg/Havel. Among them was Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld. In Brandenburg, these persons were killed with carbon monoxide on the same day in the part of the former penitentiary converted into a gas-killing facility. Only one patient, Ilse Herta Zachmann, escaped this fate at first (see corresponding entry).

It is not known whether and, if so, when relatives became aware of Ludwig Heinz’ death. In all documented death notices, it was claimed that the person concerned had died in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German). Those murdered in Brandenburg, however, were never in Chelm/Cholm, a town east of Lublin. The former Polish sanatorium there no longer existed after SS units had murdered almost all patients on 12 Jan. 1940. Also, there was no German records office in Chelm. Its fabrication and the use of postdated dates of death served to disguise the killing operation and at the same time enabled the authorities to claim higher care expenses for periods extended accordingly.

Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld’s parents also died in the Holocaust. When Siegfried Hirschfeld visited his son for the last time in Strecknitz in 1940, he and his wife had already been living for several years in very cramped conditions together with another family in an apartment in the Samuel-Levy-Stift at Bundesstrasse 35, a "Jews’ house” ("Judenhaus”). There the Hirschfeld couple received the deportation order. Siegfried and Jenny Hirschfeld were ordered to join the transport comprising a total of 968 people headed for Minsk on 8 Nov. 1941. There was never any sign of life from them again.

Herbert Hirschfeld, the younger of the two Hirschfeld sons, was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp on 13 Feb. 1937 and transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp on 23 Sept. 1938. The reasons for his detention and his fate are unknown.

Ludwig Heinz Hirschfeld is commemorated by a Stolperstein in Hamburg-Hoheluft-Ost, at Husumer Strasse 18.

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

© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; StaH 351-12 I Amt für Wohlfahrtsanstalten I 19 Israelitische Insassen, 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Nr. 22502 Heinz Hirschfeld; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Heinz Hirschfeld der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; IMGWF Lübeck, Archiv, Patientenakte Heinz Hirschfeld der Heilanstalt Lübeck-Strecknitz; Standesamt Kassel, Geburtsregister Nr. 681/1880 Simon Siegfried Hirschfeld; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig. Vielliez von, Anna, Mit aller Kraft verdrängt. Entrechtung und Verfolgung "nicht arischer" Ärzte in Hamburg 1933 bis 1945, Hamburg 2009, S. 308f. (Hermann Josephy).
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