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Anna Paulsen
© StaH

Anna Paulsen (née Harrsen) * 1857

Marktstraße 93 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Pauli)

HIER WOHNTE
ANNA PAULSEN
GEB. HARRSEN
JG. 1857
EINGEWIESEN 1914
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
´VERLEGT‘ 16.8.1943
HEILANSTALT
AM STEINHOF / WIEN
ERMORDET 27.12.1943

Anna Paulsen, née Harrsen, born 5.5.1857 in Karlum (Südtondern/Schleswig-Holstein), in psychiatric institutions since 20.9.1913, transported from the later Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing home 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 27.12.1944

Marktstraße 93 (St. Pauli)

Anna Margaretha/Margareta Harrsen (callname Anna), married name Paulsen, was born on 5 May 1857 in the small village of Karlum, about ten kilometres north-east of Niebüll in what was then Südtondern, part of the former Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein. Her parents, the merchant Peter Jacob Harrsen and his wife Metta Christina, née Brodersen, lived there. Anna Harrsen had at least two siblings, Mathilda Christina, born on 2 July 1854, and William Peter, born on 17 June 1860, both born in Karlum. Nothing is known about Anna Harrsen's childhood and school years.

At a date unknown to us, she married Nicolai Nielsen Paulsen, an office worker born on 13 April 1857, who came from Norderlügum, a village in the district of Tondern, also in the then Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein. (The district of Tondern became part of Denmark as a result of the referendum in 1920).

Little is known about the Paulsen family. From Anna Paulsen's medical records in the former ‘Langenhorn Lunatic Asylum’, later the Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home, in the north of Hamburg, it is clear that the Paulsen couple first lived in Flensburg and later in Hamburg. However, we do not know where they lived in Flensburg or when they moved to Hamburg.

The marriage to Nicolai Nielsen Paulsen produced a daughter, Dora (date of birth unknown), and a son, Willy, born on 5 May 1888. Both children were born in Flensburg.

Anna Paulsen could only hear very poorly. Her daughter Dora, married name Schulz, told the ‘Friedrichsberg Lunatic Asylum’ in Hamburg in 1913 that her mother had been ‘strange and melancholy’ even as a young girl. Her marriage had not been harmonious, so that the couple had lived separately. Nicolai Nielsen Paulsen had lost several jobs due to his wife's behaviour. Because she had often caused serious disputes in her neighbourhood for minor reasons, Anna Paulsen had lived with her daughter in Flensburg in the last few years before her first institutionalisation. She had beaten her adult daughter and exposed her, a dressmaker by profession, to customers. Eight to fourteen days a month had given her headaches and she had felt persecuted in Marienhölzung (a forest in the west of Flensburg).

After taking a medical history with her daughter, the Flensburg doctor and later Nazi ‘racial hygienist’ Leopold Vellguth diagnosed Anna Paulsen with a ‘simple mental disorder’ without explaining it in detail. He admitted her to a clinic in Flensburg on 7 March 1913, initially for observation, because she could not receive the necessary care at home. A week later, on 14 March 1913, Anna Paulsen was transferred to the then ‘Schleswig Lunatic Asylum’. The illness ‘simple mental disorder’ required institutional care.

In Schleswig, the staff repeatedly observed hallucinations. Anna Paulsen was said to have hallucinated a lot and allegedly heard her deceased parents. She once believed that her brother had come to pick her up from the institution. Her moods fluctuated greatly.

On 2 September 1913, Anna Paulsen was transferred to the then Hamburg ‘Friedrichsberg Lunatic Asylum’, not for therapeutic reasons, but to ‘bring the patient to the city of her "supportive residence”’. The Hamburg General Poorhouse (Allgemeine Armenanstalt Hamburg) was responsible for paying for her accommodation and care. Apparently Anna Paulsen had lived in Hamburg before her stay with her daughter in Flensburg. However, Nicolai Nielsen and Anna Paulsen could not be found in the Hamburg address book.

In Friedrichsberg, Anna Paulsen was initially perceived as calm and outwardly orderly. She was said to have given correct and clear information, among other things that she had been separated from her husband for 20 years.

The Friedrichsberg patient file also contains reports of hallucinations. Again, Anna Paulsen was said to hear her deceased parents, and she also believed she could hear the father of the senior physician in Schleswig.

Anna Paulsen's husband, who lived at Marktstraße 93 in St. Pauli according to her medical records, died in Hamburg-Eppendorf General Hospital on 6 January 1923. It is not known whether Anna Paulsen was informed of her husband's death.

Apparently the ‘Friedrichsberg Lunatic Asylum’ no longer saw any therapeutic possibilities in 1914 and transferred Anna Paulsen to the ‘Langenhorn Lunatic Asylum’ in the north of Hamburg on 24 January. The patient file contains no reports about the long time in the Langenhorn asylum, only an admission form.

Anna Paulsen was probably transferred to the ‘Deacon's Educational and Nursing home Anscharhöhe’ in Eppendorf in 1936 or 1937.

According to a contract concluded in 1935 between the State Welfare Association of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and ‘Anscharhöhe’, the latter undertook to admit ‘100 calm, non-dangerous, female mental patients’ from Langenhorn. It was further stipulated: ‘These patients will [...] be admitted through the Langenhorn State Hospital.’ (After the First World War, the Langenhorn mental hospital had been renamed the state hospital; from around 1936/1937 it was called a sanatorium and nursing home).

Although the staff described Anna Paulsen in the ‘Anscharhöhe’ in 1938 as ‘agitated and violent’, Anna Paulsen remained there until 1943. At the time of the heavy air raids on Hamburg at the end of July/beginning of August 1943 (‘Operation Gomorrah’), around 60 former Langenhorn patients were living there. Most of them were transferred back to Langenhorn on 6 August 1943. We do not know their exact number. Anna Paulsen was probably one of them.

On 16 August, 72 women and girls from the ‘Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home’ and 228 women and girls from the former ‘Alsterdorf Asylum‘ were transported to Vienna to ‘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. In addition to Anna Paulsen, the transport contained another 48 women who had been brought back to Langenhorn from the ‘Anscharhöhe’ shortly beforehand.

On arrival in Vienna, Anna Paulsen, now 86 years old, was considered to be in need of care, and shortly afterwards very frail and poorly orientated. She had to be urged to eat and take care of her body. Similar entries can also be found in 1944. In July of that year, Anna Paulsen's brother William Harrsen received the following information on request: ‘Patient was already quite frail and mentally weakened when she was admitted here. The mental and physical deterioration is now continuing, albeit slowly. She needs help with eating and personal hygiene. She has also been sleeping less well again recently. Sincerely yours. Dr Umlauf.’

Anna Paulsen died on 27 December 1944 in Vienna of marasmus and arteriosclerosis, according to an entry in her medical file. (Marasmus is a serious illness resulting from chronic quantitative malnutrition). Anna Paulsen last weighed 38.5 kg.

During the first phase of Nazi ‘euthanasia’ from September 1939 to August 1941, the institution in Vienna was an intermediate institution for the killing centres. After the official end of the murders in the killing centres at the end of August 1941, murders continued on a massive scale in previous intermediate institutions, including the Vienna institution itself: through overdoses of medication, failure to treat illnesses, neglect and, above all, through food deprivation. By the end of 1945, 257 of the 300 girls and women from Hamburg had died, 61 patients from Langenhorn and 196 from Alsterdorf.

Anna Paulsen lived in psychiatric institutions for many decades. Her relocation from Schleswig because of the Hamburg ‘supportive residence’ indicates that she had previously lived with her husband at Marktstraße 93 in the St. Pauli district, at least temporarily. This is why the Stumbling Stone in memory of Anna Paulsen was set into the pavement here. (The year of death on the stumbling stone was 1943, but the correct year is 1944).

Stand: April 2025
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9800 Sterberegister Nr. 60/1923 (Nicolai Nielsen Paulsen), 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalten Abl. 1/1995 Nr. 7289 (Anna Paulsen); Stadtarchiv Flensburg Sign. G1888H-Z Kästchennummer 12 Urkunde Nummer 407/1888 Geburtskarteikarte Willy Paulsen; Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Bestand Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien, Patientenakte Anna Paulsen. Harald Jenner, 100 Jahre Anscharhöhe 1886-1986, Neumünster 1986, S. 108 ff. Peter von Rönn, Der Transport nach Wien, in: Peter von Rönn u.a., Wege in den Tod, Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 425 ff. Peter von Rönn, Der Transport nach Wien, in: Peter von Rönn u.a., Wege in den Tod, Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 425 ff. Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 340f.