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Hans Kühl * 1900

Wandsbeker Stieg 44 (Hamburg-Nord, Hohenfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
HANS KÜHL
JG. 1900
EINGEWIESEN 1931
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
‚VERLEGT‘ 7.8.1943
HEILANSTALT EICHBERG
13.10.1943
‚HEILANSTALT‘ WEILMÜNSTER
ERMORDET 5.5.1944

Hans Hermann Richard Kühl, born 6.11.1900 in Elberfeld, from 28.1.1918 to 6.11.1931 in the Vorwerk children's and nursing home in Lübeck, then in the Alsterdorfer Anstalten (now the Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf), transferred to the Eichberg state sanatorium in Eltville (Hesse) on 7.8.1943, transferred on 13.10.1943 to the Weilmünster state sanatorium at Taunus, died there on 5.5.1944

Wandsbeker Stieg 44 (Hohenfelde)

Hans Hermann Richard Kühl (callname Hans), born on 6 November 1900 in Elberfeld, was one of seven children of the engineer Johann Hans Friedrich Kühl, whose birth details we do not know, and his wife, the teacher Emilie Mathilde Anna (nickname Anna), née Bockhorn, born on 18 June 1868. The family came from Elberfeld, today a district of Wuppertal. Not only Hans Kühl was born there, his older sister Magdalena Mathilde Gertrud was also born there on 23 April 1898.

The family moved several times, perhaps because the father changed jobs. This is initially due to the fact that Hans Kühl attended the ninth grade of an auxiliary school in Leipzig and then the 9th and 8th grade of the auxiliary school in Zerbst twice each. (Zerbst is located roughly halfway between the cities of Magdeburg and Wittenberg in what is now Saxony-Anhalt. The 8th and 9th grades were the lowest at that time).

After a stay in an educational home in Neubrandenburg until December 1917, Hans Kühl became a resident of the Vorwerk educational and nursing home in Lübeck on 28 January 1918. In 1931 the attending physician Furthmann reported about Hans Kühl to the Alsterdorf Asylum: the young man had been kept busy in the garden - the aim had been to train him horticulturally in accordance with his mental powers. However, he made little progress. ‘Genuine epilepsy’ (congenital epilepsy) had already been reported to the Vorwerk institution as the underlying illness on admission. Seizures had occurred from time to time, but had been held back by bromine and later by Luminal. In the last two years of his stay at Vorwerk, he had become increasingly agitated, while the number of his epileptic seizures had remained low. The doctor mentioned a total of seven seizures between 2 October 1930 and 18 July 1931, during which time bed rest had to be prescribed on 97 days. Kühl's willingness and ability to work had diminished more and more, and heavy doses of Luminal had to be administered. This made it impossible for Hans Kühl to remain in the Vorwerker Home, whose primary task was to educate, teach and familiarise young pupils with work. Therefore it was asked for alternative accommodation.

The Kühl family had been living at Wandsbeker Stieg 44 in Hamburg-Hohenfelde since around 1917. Hans Kühl's father had died in Elberfeld on 29 May 1929. Anna Kühl, who was 61 years old at the time, felt unable to care for and look after her son at home. He was admitted to the Alsterdorfer Asylum (now the Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on 11 November 1931. According to the patient file, the behavioural patterns already observed in Vorwerk continued in Alsterdorf. After an initially very calm phase, Hans Kühl later held the head of a fellow patient under water in the bathtub and adopted a threatening attitude towards the carer. Hans Kühn refused to go to work, ate nothing in the evening and cried mor often.

After weeks of diligent and quiet work in the brush-making workshop, there followed a period in which, according to the entries in his patient file, Hans Kühl was very agitated, wilful and lazy and threatened to cut off his hand. At times he was dazed and unsteady on his feet.

When he refused to eat for a long time, he was finally fed with a tube. According to entries in the patient file, phases of severe agitation and confusion also occurred in 1932. He wanted to leave the hospital grounds several times ‘to go to the nursery in Neubrandenburg’.

At the beginning of 1933, Hans Kühl was hospitalised in the asylum’s infirmary with influenza and pneumonia. He was then in a ‘permanent epileptic state’ in April and May. As the year progressed, there were more and more reports of severe agitation, aggression and quarrelsomeness, interspersed with ‘permanent epileptic states’, which were similar in the years that followed.

His family remained in contact with Hans Kühl throughout the years and he was repeatedly granted leave to visit him.

The Alsterdorf Asyslum had been carrying out Hans Kühl's sterilisation since 1937. With the ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring’ of July 1933, the National Socialists had established the formal legal basis for the forced ‘sterilisation’ of supposedly ‘hereditarily diseased’ and ‘alcoholics’. According to this law, a person could be made infertile (sterilised) if it was feared that the person would pass on these defects. (see Reichsgesetzblatt I No. 86/1933 p. 146 ff.).

In October, the Alsterdorf Asylum sent the mother an information sheet and an application form for sterilisation. Without waiting for a reply, the Alsterdorf Asylum applied to the Hamburg Hereditary Health Court on 6 October 1937 for Hans Kühl's infertilisation. They wrote in justification: ‘The patient is a severely demented epileptic with frequent states of agitation in which he represents a certain danger to those around him, as he lashes out wildly in his rage. He cannot be used for any useful occupation. There are no exogenous factors that could have caused his suffering. Patient suffers from genuine epilepsy, sterilisation is therefore necessary.’

Anna Kühl responded on 21 October 1937 to the application form sent by the Alsterdorf Asylum: ‘In view of the scope of the application to be made, I would like to refrain from making it on my own initiative. I will not appeal against the decision of the Hereditary Health Court to sterilise my son.’

A request for leave in December was rejected on the grounds that the operation had not yet been carried out.

The operation was performed at Eppendorf University Hospital. Hans Kühl was admitted on 21 February 1938, where he remained until 28 February.

Due to agitation, Hans Kühl was repeatedly admitted to the guard room in 1938 and in the following years. (Restless patients were isolated in ‘guard rooms’ in the psychiatric institutions and treated with permanent baths, sleep and fever cures. They were introduced in the Alsterdorf Asylum at the end of the 1920s. Their function changed over the course of the 1930s: patients were now primarily sedated here, sometimes with medication, sometimes with restraints or other measures. Those affected often perceived this as punishment).

There were also complaints that Hans Kühl was disrupting work in the labour unit by being argumentative. One report read: ‘Behaved boorishly in church, refused to take off his headgear at first, picked fights with fellow pupils on the way back from church and refused to be calmed down in the department.’ In mid-1941, there was an argument with a fellow patient in which he fell so badly that he had to be taken to the infirmary.

The reports of agitation, arguments with fellow patients and epileptic twilight states continued. Then, on 7 August 1943, hospital doctor and SA member Dr Kreyenberg wrote: ‘Relocated to Eichberg due to severe damage to the institutions caused by air raids.’

After the Alsterdorf Asylum had suffered damage during the heavy Allied air raids on Hamburg at the end of July/beginning of August 1943 (‘Operation Gomorrah’), the director of the Alsterdorf institutions, SA member Pastor Friedrich Lensch, took advantage of this situation and asked the Hamburg health authorities for permission to evacuate around 750 residents, as they had been made homeless by the bombing raids. As a result, between 7 and 16 August 1943, three transports left Alsterdorf with a total of 469 girls, boys, women and men in various directions. 128 people were assigned to the transport of 7 August 1943, the destination of which was the ‘Kalmenhof Sanatorium and Nursing Home’ in Idstein in the Rheingau for 52 boys and the ‘Eichberg State Sanatorium’ near Wiesbaden for 76 boys, girls, women and men.

Hans Kühl was one of the 76 patients who were taken to the ‘Eichberg State Sanatorium’ near Wiesbaden.

The institution had served as an intermediate institution during ‘Aktion T4’, from where patients were transferred to the Hadamar killing centre. After the official end of the ‘euthanasia programme’ in August 1941, however, the murders continued through systematic malnutrition and overdoses of medication combined with nursing neglect - including in Eichberg itself.

However, Hans Kühl was transferred to the state sanatorium in Weilmünster at Taunus on 13 October 1943. We do not know the reason for this.

In Weilmünster, the sick lived in the most miserable conditions. The number of deaths in the years from 1940 to 1944 was far above the previous average. This sad record was the result of the constant starvation suffered by the patients from the outset, their inadequate medical care in the event of illness and the deliberate use of lethal drugs.

Hans Kühl died there on 5 May 1944.

Stand: April 2025
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg diverse Jahrgänge; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf Archiv, Sonderakte V 128 (Hans Kühl).