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Charlotte Heyne * 1896

Angerstraße 38 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
CHARLOTTE HEYNE
JG. 1896
EINGEWIESEN 1943
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
‚VERLEGT‘ 16.8.1943
‚HEILANSTALT‘
AM STEINHOF / WIEN
ERMORDET 17.11.1944

Margarethe Charlotte Heyne, born 12.8.1896 in Charlottenburg (now Berlin), admitted to the Averhoffstraße 5 care home in Hamburg on 25.1.1943, transferred to the former Alsterdorf Asylum (now the Alsterdorf Protestant Foundation) on 1.4.1943, transported 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 17.11.1944

Angerstraße 38 (Hohenfelde)

Margarethe Charlotte (nickname Charlotte) Heyne was born on 12 August 1896 in Charlottenburg (today a district of Berlin). She was the youngest child of Waldemar Richard Heyne, a hairdresser and dentist (the professional title for dentists without academic training at the time), born on 4 November 1866 in Schleitz (Thuringia), and his wife, the tailor Emma Rosalie Margarethe, née Klinzmann, born on 22 December 1869 in Magdeburg. The couple married in Magdeburg on 12 January 1889 and had two sons there: Willi, born on 8 July 1889, and Kurt Leander, born on 14 September 1890. Their daughter Elfriede Margarete was born in Berlin on 26 February 1892, as were probably their sons Fritz, born on 10 January 1903, and Friedrich, whose date of birth we do not know. Elfriede Margarete died at the age of four months. Friedrich is said to have died as an infant. Fritz ended his life in 1919. We know nothing about the background to this.

The family probably moved from Berlin to Hamburg in the 1930s. In the Hamburg address book of 1937, Waldemar Heyne was listed as a dentist at Holsteinischer Kamp 110, house 3, in Barmbek, and from 1938 at Angerstraße 38, rear building, in Hohenfelde.

The parents had been aware of Charlotte's health problems since her earliest childhood. We do not know whether they had Charlotte examined by a doctor. In any case, she seems to have always lived at home.

Charlotte Heyne's mother died of heart failure on 4 December 1942. Her widower, now 76 years old, was probably no longer able to provide adequate care for his daughter. From 25 January 1943, 46-year-old Charlotte Heyne lived in the care home of the Hamburg state welfare institutions at Averhoffstraße 5 in the Uhlenhorst district of Hamburg. Just one month later, the care home contacted the former Alsterdorf Asylum ("Alsterdorfer Anstalten", now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) with the aim of transferring Charlotte Heyne there. The care home wrote the following statement: ‘According to a medical report by our doctor, Dr Rose, our inmate Charlotte Heyne, born 12 August 1896 in Charlottenburg, is not suitable for the Averhoffstraße institution. She is a highly feeble-minded patient whose further treatment is to be taken over there. Signed. Averhoffstraße care home.’

On 1 April 1943, Charlotte Heyne was transferred to the Alsterdorf Asylum. There she was diagnosed with microcephalus and imbecility. (Microcephaly is a developmental disorder in which the head has a comparatively small size; it is accompanied by a mental disability for the person(s) affected, the intensity of which depends on the extent and accompanying maldevelopments. Imbecility is no longer a common term for moderate intellectual disability).

During her stay of only 4 ½ months in the Alsterdorf Asylum, Charlotte Heyne was perceived as ‘quiet and orderly’. She had fitted into her new surroundings immediately and had not shown any signs of alienation. Charlotte Heyne was described as ‘very cuddly and in need of love’. She got on well with her fellow patients. However, her speech was so unclear that she often had to be asked until the meaning of her words was understood.

The Alsterdorf Asylum also suffered bomb damage as a result of the heavy air raids on Hamburg at the end of July/beginning of August 1943 (‘Operation Gomorrah’). The head of the asylum, SA member Pastor Friedrich Lensch, took the opportunity 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 with the approval of the health authorities. On 16 August 1943, 228 women and girls from Alsterdorf and 72 girls and women from the Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home were ‘transferred’ 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’) in Vienna on one of these transports. Charlotte Heyne was among them.

Her father, who had found accommodation in Dersau on Plöner See after the bomb damage in Hamburg, received the following short letter dated 13 August 1943 [!]: ‘We hereby inform you that as a result of bomb damage in our institution, your daughter Charlotte was transferred to the Wagner v. Jauregg nursing home in Vienna on 16 August 1943.’

Shortly after her arrival in Vienna, Charlotte Heyne was allegedly taken to infection pavilion 19 on 29 August 1943 because of ‘erysipelas’. (‘Erysipelas’ is a bacterial infection of the skin that penetrates deeper layers of the skin via small injuries on the surface of the body). Charlotte Heyne spent most of her days in bed. Her medical file contains the remark that she was completely dull and apathetic, spoke unintelligibly and had to be encouraged to do everything.

In March 1944, the Viennese institutions filled out the ‘Registration Form I’ ("Meldebogen I"), which the institutions had to use to report important data on 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 formed the basis for deciding whether people with mental disabilities or mental illnesses were to be killed in one of the six gas murder centres. Charlotte Heyne was recorded as being feeble-minded from birth, completely disorganised, unclean, unable to speak and having to be made to do everything. She was ‘unusable’ for work. 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 Charlotte Heyne's future fate.

Charlotte Heyne's body weight, which had last been 38 kg in Alsterdorf, had dropped to 33 kg in May 1944 and to 26 1/2 kg in November 1944.

Waldemar Heyne enquired about his daughter several times. At the beginning of October 1944, he received the following message: ‘In response to your card dated 22nd of May, you are informed that in view of your daughter's severe weakness, it cannot be assumed that she was even aware of her transfer to another institution. Following an illness with erysipelas, the patient has lost a few kilograms of body weight, but is otherwise well. Signed ‘Doctor Wunderer’.

There is nothing in Charlotte Heyne's medical records about a deterioration in her state of health that could have led to her death.

She allegedly died of pneumonia on 17 November 1944.

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 of illness, but above all through food deprivation. By the end of 1945, 257 of the 300 girls and women from Hamburg had died, 196 of them from Alsterdorf.

It can be assumed that Charlotte Heyne did not die of natural causes either.
Stand: December 2024
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg; StaH 332-5 Standesämter, Standesamt Hamburg 05, Sterberegister, Nr. 903/1942 (Margarethe Rosalie Heyne); Standesamt Magdeburg, Geburtsregister, Nr. 2564/1890 (Kurt Leander Heyne), Heiratsregister, Nr. 16/1889 (Richard Heyne/Emma Rosalie Margarethe Klinzmann); Landesarchiv Berlin, Standesamt IX, Geburtsregister Nr. 514/1892 (Elfriede Margarethe Heyne), Standesamt Berlin X A, Sterberegister Nr. 866/1892 (Elfriede Margarethe Heyne); Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Sonderakte V 202 (Charlotte Heyne). Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 283 ff., 331 ff..