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Ilse Gaetcke
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Ilse Gaetcke * 1909

Winterhuder Weg 27 (Hamburg-Nord, Uhlenhorst)

HIER WOHNTE
ILSE GAETCKE
JG. 1909
EINGEWIESEN 1917
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
´VERLEGT`16.8.1943
HEILANSTALT
AM STEINHOF / WIEN
ERMORDET 27.2.1945

Ilse Maria Auguste Anita Gaetcke, born 25.9.1909 in Carrenzien (today Zarrentin, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania), admitted on 15.5.1917 and 15.10.1924 to the former ‘Alsterdorf Asylum‘ (‘Alsterdorfer Anstalten‘, now ‘Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf‘), transferred to Vienna on 16.8.1943 to the ‘Wagner von Jauregg – Curative and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna’ (‘Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien’, also known as the institution ‘Am Steinhof’), died there on 27.2.1945

Winterhuder Weg 27 (Uhlenhorst)

Ilse Maria Auguste Anita Gaetcke (callname Ilse) was the eldest of four children of the Protestant couple Frieda Anna Doris, née Heidtmann, and Martin Wilhelm Ernst Gaetcke. At Ilse's birth, her father's occupation was recorded as ‘Gendarmerie constable’. The girl was born on 25 September 1909 in Carrenzien (now Zarrentin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). Several official documents erroneously state Neuhaus/Elbe as the place of birth. The registry office was located in this town, which is mentioned on the birth certificate together with the date of the document. We do not know the names and personal details of the other three children, one of whom died of diphtheria at the age of ten months.

Martin Gaetcke, born on 20 May 1881 in Stralendorf/Mecklenburg, and Frieda Heidtmann, born on 17 December 1887 in Hamburg, were married on 24 December 1908 in Hamburg. At the time, Martin Gaetcke was a sergeant in the 5th battery of the Lauenburg Field Artillery Regiment No. 45.

The family must have established their joint residence in Hamburg around 1914. Martin Gaetcke was first listed in the Hamburg address book of 1915, at Winterhuder Weg 27 in the Uhlenhorst district. In the meantime, he had left military service and was now working as a grain broker.

Ilse Gaetcke's parents noticed developmental delays in their daughter at the age of three. Later, the child was unable to attend school and six months of private tuition were unsuccessful. Ilse suffered from strabismus (crossed eyes). At home, she is said to have done small jobs under supervision. At the beginning of 1917, a doctor assessed the physically strong child's speech development as poor. She spoke almost unintelligibly and could not say her name correctly, and also had to be dressed and undressed. The doctor diagnosed ‘feeble-mindedness’ (a term no longer used today for a reduction in intelligence or congenital intelligence deficiency) and considered it necessary to commit the child to the ‘Alsterdorf Asylum‘ (‘Alsterdorfer Anstalten‘, now ‘Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf‘).

Ilse Gaetcke was admitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum on 16 May 1917. Her father covered the costs. In Alsterdorf, the child was perceived as sociable and always cheerful. At her parents' request, Ilse Gaetcke was released back home on 30 March 1919, but was readmitted to Alsterdorf on 15 October 1924. No reports on her development in the five and a half years up to 1924 have been preserved. It was also noted on Ilse Gaetcke's second admission to the Asylum that her speech was barely intelligible, that she had to be dressed and undressed and otherwise cared for. Until 1930, it was reported that Ilse resisted dental treatment, but helped with manual labour such as polishing and was always cheerful. After 1931, she is said to have become more difficult in her dealings with other patients: she is said to have enjoyed knocking over her fellow patients and pulling out their hair. In the years from 1938 onwards, she was described as increasingly unpopular as a result of ‘naughtiness’ and ‘bullying through stormy tenderness’ towards her fellow patients. She had ‘lashed out’ at rejections. Her work performance had deteriorated so that she could no longer be employed in the washhouse. From November 1942, Ilse Gaetcke was labelled a ‘nursing patient’. She is said to have been barely comprehensible. Her medical file summarises: ‘She is affectionate in nature, but also deceitful and devious, likes to tease other children. (Until a few decades ago, the term ‘children’ was also used in institutions for adult residents).

During the heavy air raids on Hamburg at the end of July/beginning of August 1943 (‘Operation Gomorrah’), the Alsterdorf Asylum also suffered bomb damage. The head of the institution, SA member Pastor Friedrich Lensch, took the opportunity, with the approval of the health authorities, to get rid of some of the residents who were considered ‘weak in labour, in need of care or particularly difficult’ by transporting them to other sanatoriums and nursing homes. On 16 August 1943, 228 women and girls from Alsterdorf and 72 girls and women from the Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home were ‘transferred’ on one of these transports to the ‘Wagner von Jauregg – Curative and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna’ (‘Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien’, also known as the institution ‘Am Steinhof’). Ilse Gaetcke was among them.

According to the entries in the Viennese patient file, Ilse Gaetcke spent her time in the day room of the Viennese Asylum with nothing to do and no contact with her surroundings. She grimaced and spoke unintelligible words.

Ilse Gaetcke's mother, who lived in Rausdorf near Trittau after the bombing raids on Hamburg, was very worried about her daughter. She received a brief report from Vienna on 18 February 1944: ‘is on her own, but is calm, with a good appetite and sleep. Sincerely yours. Dr Umlauf’. In July 1944, she was warned that an intended visit was ‘impossible due to the time circumstances’. ‘You would not even be able to get accommodation for one night in Vienna.’

Ilse Gaetcke was transferred to the nursing section of the institution on 11 October 1944. This transfer was carried out shortly before the death of many patients from Hamburg.

In November, the Viennese institutions filled out the ‘Registration Form I’, with which the institutions had to report important data on the inmates to the ‘Euthanasia’ centre in Berlin, Tiergartenstraße 4, during the first ‘Euthanasia’ phase from 1939 to 1941. The information on these individual registration forms served as a basis for deciding whether people with mental disabilities or mental illnesses should be murdered in one of the six gas murder centres. The diagnosis of ‘idiocy’ was entered for Ilse Gaetcke, who was also told that she would not receive any visitors. The medical file provides no information about the purpose of this registration form long after the centralised control of the murder of the sick, whether it was sent to Berlin or whether it had any influence on Ilse Gaetcke's further fate.

Ilse Gaetcke's weight, which had last been recorded as 48 kg in Alsterdorf, was only 38 kg in Vienna in December 1944. She allegedly died of pulmonary tuberculosis on 27 February 1945. Until then, there had never been any mention of a life-threatening illness in her patient file.

As late as December 1944, Frieda Gaetcke had asked the Alsterdorf Asylum to readmit her daughter without success. She then contacted the Alsterdorf Asylum again: ‘Have you still not received any news of my daughter Ilse Gaedtke from Vienna? Why didn't you allow me to bring my daughter back to you? Will my suffering never end? Isn't it cruel to know a helpless child in a foreign country? I would never have given my consent. This sick child was always my favourite. How much they did to me by sending him away. Sincerely Anna Frieda Gaedtke’.

Frieda Gaedtke only learned of her daughter's death from Vienna on 16 May 1946: ‘We regret to inform you that your daughter Gaedtcke Ilse died of pulmonary tuberculosis on 27 February 1945. Sincerely yours. Dr Nowotny’.

During the first phase of Nazi ‘Euthanasia’ from October 1939 to August 1941, the institution in Vienna was an intermediate institution for the Hartheim killing centre near Linz. After the official end of the murders in the killing centres, mass murders continued in previous intermediate institutions, including the Vienna institution itself: through overdoses of medication and non-treatment.

By the end of 1945, 257 of the 300 girls and women from Hamburg had lost their lives, 196 of them from Alsterdorf.

Stand: January 2025
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbücher Hamburg 1913-1920; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 6462 Heiratsregister Nr. 625/1908 (Martin Wilhelm Ernst Gaetcke/ Frieda Anna Doris Heidtmann; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf Archiv, Sonderakte V 347 (Ilse Gaetcke). Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 35, 283 ff., 331 ff.