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Franz Bosse * 1916

Kulmer Gasse 5 (Hamburg-Nord, Dulsberg)

HIER WOHNTE
FRANZ BOSSE
JG. 1916
VERHAFTET 1937
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
ERMORDET 16.8.1941
BUCHENWALD

Franz Wilhelm Bosse, born 11 Jul. 1916 in Hamburg, imprisoned from 1937 – 1938, died 16 Aug. 1941 in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Kulmer Gasse 5

Franz Bosse, an agricultural worker, was persecuted as a homosexual, but there is little information about this aspect as the criminal records and the prison documents were destroyed.

Franz Bosse was born in Hamburg of a father of the same name and Anna, maiden name Holfelder, and had a younger brother and two younger sisters. His school career was apparently problematic so that he simply attended a special school and then worked as a casual labourer in the country. In 1935 the district court in Tostedt fined him for theft.

On the 15 Jul. 1937 Franz Bosse was imprisoned in the Fühlsbüttel concentration camp and remained there until 8 Jul. On his admittance to the remand prison on Holstenglacis (street in Hamburg) the state officials gave the grounds for detaining him as "unnatural sexual offences,” which resulted in him being sentenced to two and a half month’s imprisonment by the Hamburg district court. At the end of July he was admitted to the Eppendorf hospital for a short period, but stayed in prison until 6 Oct. 1937.

Being an unqualified special school leaver with a criminal record of homosexual relationships in the National Socialist period would appear to have sealed his fate. His father was "under no circumstances” prepared to accommodate him, he found no work, lived on social security and from begging and was temporarily without a fixed abode. It is therefore not surprising that shortly after his release from prison he got into conflict with the law: as a tenant Franz Bosse stole a pair of boots in the Hellbrook Straße, removed milk and rolls (bread) from stairwells and as examples of further minor thefts broke into allotments and cellar rooms. He stole a bicycle from his family. Even as early as 8 Dec. 1937 he was once again taken into custody in the remand prison where he was sentenced to 11 months’ imprisonment for these offences by the district court in Hamburg. The court decided that as of then he was in danger of becoming a "habitual criminal”.

He served his sentence until 6 Oct. 1938 and was at that time released from the Glasmoor men’s prison. His mother even tried to positively influence and revoke the legal proceedings with money payments because of the theft of the bicycle, but he was already in custody in the remand prison, this time for "serious theft”, which is why after his conviction at the end of the month he was transferred to the Bremen-Oslebshausen prison. Following this all traces of him are lost as a result of missing extant documents, but it does not rule out the possibility that immediately after this unknown term of imprisonment he was transferred to a concentration camp by the police. With the prisoner number 7138 and under the category for prisoners ASR ("Arbeitsscheu Reich”- Reich action directed against work-shy persons), and coming from Dachau on 5 Jul. 1941, he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he officially died of tuberculosis at the age of 25 on 16 Aug. 1941.

Translator: Peter Huggett
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.


© Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH, 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung, Abl. 2, 451 a E 1, 1 b; 242-1II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferung 16; 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 1807/38. Auskunft Stefanie Dellemann vom Archiv der Gedenkstätte Buchenwald vom August 2011.