Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Ernst Marten * 1908

Wandsbeker Chaussee 277 (Wandsbek, Eilbek)

HIER WOHNTE
ERNST MARTEN
JG. 1908
EINGEWIESEN 1920
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
‚VERLEGT‘ 28.7.1941
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
27.11.1941 ‚HEILANSTALT‘
TIEGENHOF / GNIEZNO
ERMORDET 8.4.1942

Ernst Karl Joachim Marten, born 30.8.1908 in Hamburg, admitted to the former ‚Alsterdorf Asylum‘ (‚Alsterdorfer Anstalten‘, now ‚Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf‘) on 30.4.1920, transferred to the ‘Sanatorium and Nursing Home Hamburg-Langenhorn’ on 28.7.1941 and to the ‘Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’ (Polish: Dziekanka) near Gnesen (Polish: Gniezno) on 27.11.1941, died there on 8.4.1942

Wandsbeker Chaussee 277 (Eilbek)

Ernst Karl Joachim (callname Ernst) Marten was born on 30 August 1908 in the home of his mother, the unmarried worker Sofia Dorothea Köhler (born on 28 July 1882 in Hamburg), at Rossberg 5 in Hamburg-Eilbek. He initially bore his mother's name until his biological father, the coachman Ernst Detlof Siegmund Max Marten, and his mother married on 15 March 1910 in Hamburg. On this day, Ernst Marten Sr. gave his son Ernst Marten Jr. the status of a legitimate child and the surname Marten. The father, a stone cutter by profession, was born in Ludwigslust on 12 December 1887 and was still living there at the time of the marriage. After their marriage, the Marten couple settled with their son at Wandsbeker Chaussee 277.

Their son Ernst Marten was admitted to the ‚Alsterdorf Asylum‘ (‚Alsterdorfer Anstalten‘, now ‚Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf‘) on 30 April 1920 when he was just twelve years old. We do not know the reasons for this. His medical records are no longer available. The few other dates of his life are taken from the admission book of the Alsterdorf Asylum.

Ernst Marten lived in the Alsterdorf Asylum for 21 years until he was initially transferred to the ‘Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home’ on 28 July 1941, together with at least 49 other men. Three days later, a transport of at least 20 women followed them there.

Michael Wunder, who has researched the history of the murdered Alsterdorf patients, pointed out that the transports, which mainly consisted of particularly weak people who were unable to work, had been put together according to so-called registration forms that the institution had previously sent to the ‘Euthanasia’ centre at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. Pastor Lensch, then director of the Alsterdorf Asylum, had then received a corresponding list of transport participants from the Hamburg health authorities. Health Senator Ofterdinger had assured him that it was merely a transfer to relieve the Alsterdorf Asylum and to make good use of the empty beds in Langenhorn.

Nevertheless, excitement spread among the inmates when the grey buses of GeKraT (Gemeinnützige Krankentransport Gesellschaft) drove onto the grounds of the Alsterdorf Asylum. Thanks to the church protests against ‘Euthanasia’, which had reached their peak throughout the Reich at this time, and information from southern and eastern German institutions, the killing operations were also well known among the carers at the Alsterdorf Asylum and, through them, to some of the inmates. Lensch therefore wrote a circular to all carers in which he described the removal as an ‘administrative act’ that had ‘nothing to do with other measures’. The nursing staff had to acknowledge receipt of this circular.

Despite the justification, Ernst Marten was transferred four months later in a transport of 66 men and women from Langenhorn to the ‘Gau-Heilanstalt’ Tiegenhof (Dziekanka) near Gnesen (Gniezno). (Four of the total of 70 Alsterdorf patients had died in Langenhorn before the transport).

In total, more than 200 people were transported from the ‘Sanatorium and Nursing Home Hamburg-Langenhorn’ to the ‘Gauheilanstalt Tiegenhof’ in several transports between 26 September and 27 November 1941.

The former ‘Dziekanka Psychiatric Hospital’ near Gniezno had been occupied by the German Wehrmacht in October 1939 and was given the name ‘Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’. By the summer/autumn of 1941, the German occupiers had murdered the Polish patients in several operations. When the Hamburg patients arrived, they too were killed by systematic starvation, overdoses of medication and neglect. There were separate killing rooms in the Tiegenhof accommodation centres where the defenceless and exhausted victims were injected with lethal drugs, inserted or dissolved in soup.

Ernst Marten only lived in the Tiegenhof institution for just under five months, dying on 8 April 1942 at the age of 33. The death certificate dated 17 April 1942 states: ‘Marasmus due to idiocy’. Marasmus is a process of emaciation and exhaustion that lasts for months to years. The cause of death makes it clear that Ernst Marten was grossly neglected and simply starved to death.

Ernst Marten spent 22 of the 33 years of his life in various institutions, sometimes under inhumane conditions. The Stumbling Stone in his memory is located at Wandsbeker Chaussee 277, where he lived before being institutionalised.

Translation: Ingo Wille
Stand: January 2025
© Karin Gutjahr

Quellen: StaH 332-5 Standesämter, 2019 Geburtsregister Nr. 3102/1882 (Sofia Dorothea Köhler),
113440 Geburtsregister Nr. 2290/1908 (Ernst Karl Joachim Marten), 6479 Heiratsregister Nr. 50/1910 (Sofia Dorothea Köhler/Ernst Detlef Siegmund Max Marten); Urząd Stanu Cywilnego (Standesamt) Gniezno, Sterberegisterauszug Nr. 162/1942 (Ernst Karl Joachim Marten); Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 269 ff.; Enno Schwanke, Die Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Tiegenhof, Frankfurt/M. 2015, S. 101 ff.