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Bruno Ordelheide * 1926

Hogenfelder Straße 11 (Eimsbüttel, Schnelsen)

HIER WOHNTE
BRUNO ORDELHEIDE
JG. 1926
EINGEWIESEN 1937
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
‚VERLEGT‘ 28.7.1941
‚HEILANSTALT‘ LANGENHORN
27.11.1941 TIEGENHOF
ERMORDET 19.3.1942

Bruno Franz Josef Ordelheide, born 30.3.1926 in Hamburg, admitted to the ‘Alsterdorf Asylum’ ("Alsterdorfer Anstalten", now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on 27.8.1937, transferred to the ‘Sanatorium and Nursing Home Hamburg-Langenhorn’ ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn") on 28.7.1941, transferred to the ‘Tiegenhof Asylum‘ ("Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof" renamed Dziekanka) near Gnesen (today Gniezno/Poland) on 27.11.1941, died there on 19.3.1942

Hogenfelder Straße 11 (Schnelsen)

Bruno Franz Josef Ordelheide was born on 30 March 1926, probably in what is now Hamburg. His parents, the labourer Bruno Ordelheide and his wife Hertha, née Jürgens, are listed in the Schnelsen-Lokstedt address book from 1933 at what was then Hochstraße 16 in Schnelsen and from 1937 at Hogenfelder Straße 11, also in Schnelsen.
(Schnelsen was then a part of Lokstedt and belonged to the district of Pinneberg in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, from April 1938 to Hamburg).

The little information known about Bruno Ordelheide is taken from the admission book of the former ‘Alsterdorf Asylum’ ("Alsterdorfer Anstalten” now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf). According to this, Bruno Ordelheide was admitted to the ‘Alsterdorf Asylum’ on 27 August 1937. Nothing is known about his life in this Asylum, so that his diagnosis is also unknown.

Around four years later, he was transferred to the ‘Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home’ ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Langenhorn”) on 28 July and 1 August 1941 respectively together with 64 other men and women who could be found in the admission books of the ‘Alsterdorf Asylum’. Health Senator Friedrich Ofterdinger had explained to the director of the ‘Alsterdorf Asylum’, SA member Pastor Friedrich Lensch, that the Alsterdorf patients were to be transferred to Langenhorn in order to relieve the ‘Alsterdorfer Asylum’ and utilise the empty beds in Langenhorn.

On 14 November, 20 November and 27 November 1941, three patient transports with a total of 203 men and women left the ‘Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home’ for the ‘Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’ near Gnesen (Gniezno). The last of these transports consisted almost exclusively of men and women transferred from the ‘Alsterdorf Asylum’ to Langenhorn, including the now 15-year-old Bruno Ordelheide.

The Psychiatric Asylum, which was built in the 1890s just two and a half kilometres from Gnesen and around 50 kilometres from Posen (now Poznan), was given the name ‘Dziekanka’ after the territory was transferred to the re-established state of Poland. It was one of the Psychiatric Asylums with the lowest mortality rates in the world.

In October 1939, the Asylum was occupied by the German Wehrmacht, renamed ‘Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’ and included in the T4 ‘Euthanasia’ programme.

Between 7 December 1939 and 12 January 1940 alone, 1,172 patients are said to have been murdered there (Michael Wunder). Even after the official halt to the ‘Euthanasia’ gas murders at the end of August 1941, the state-organised killing continued in the ‘Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’ and other Asylums. People with disabilities and mental illnesses were now murdered through starvation rations, overdoses of medication and neglect.

Bruno Ordelheide died in the ‘Tiegenhof Asylum’ on 19 March 1942.

Stand: December 2024
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg (Abschnitt Lokstedt-Schnelsen) 1933-1940; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Aufnahmebuch 1926, lfd. Nr. 7468. Peter von Rönn u.a., Wege in den Tod, Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 75, 490/491. 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. Hamburger Gedenkbuch Euthanasie Die Toten 1939-1945, Harald Jenner, Michael Wunder, Hamburg 2017, S. 413. Enno Schwanke, Die Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Tiegenhof, Ffm. 2015, S. 101 ff.