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Maria Bockentin
© Institut für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin, Hamburg

Maria Bockentin (née Theilen) * 1888

Rehmstraße 11 (Hamburg-Nord, Winterhude)

HIER WOHNTE
MARIA BOCKENTIN
GEB. THEILEN
JG. 1888
EINGEWIESEN 1935
RICKLINGER ANSTALTEN
‚VERLEGT‘ 25.11.1941
HEILANSTALT PFAFFERODE
ERMORDET 8.12.1943

Maria Caroline Auguste Bockentin, née Theilen, born on 13.1.1888 in Hamburg, admitted to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital from 12.7.33 to 3.6.1935, transferred several times, died in the Pfafferode State Sanatorium in Mühlhausen/Thuringia, died on 8.12.1943

Rehmstraße 11, Winterhude

Maria Caroline Auguste Bockentin, née Theilen, whose call name was ‘Maria’, was born on 13 January 1888 as the daughter of Caroline Adolphine Theilen and her husband Heinrich Hermann Fredrick (Friedrich) Theilen at Bartelsstraße 48 in what was then the St. Pauli district (now Sternschanze). Maria had a sister, Pauline Elise Alexandrine, who was born on 6 December 1889 and died on 18 January 1890.

Maria Theilen's father was a sailor. It is not known whether he was alive at the time of the birth of the younger sister or the death of his wife on 20 December 1889 – shortly after the birth of Pauline – and where he may have been. Maria never got to know her father.

All we know about Maria Theilen's childhood and youth is that she attended elementary school up to first grade (first grade was the highest grade at the time).
On 6 July 1909, she married the photographer Franz Bockentin, born on 25 October 1874 in Dortmund. According to an extract from the marriage register, they both lived at Armbruststraße 1 in the St. Pauli district (now Eimsbüttel) at the time of their marriage.

Franz Bockentin was first listed in the Hamburg address book in the 1928 edition as a ‘Heildiener’ with the address Hudtwalckerstraße 29 in Winterhude. The job title ‘Heildiener’, which is no longer in use, is explained in the Duden dictionary as a surgeon's assistant.

The Bockentin couple had four children: John Franz Gustav, born on 10 August 1910, Hubert (Herbert) Julius Karl, born on 15 February 1913, Ottilie Anna Sophie, born on 20 July 1923, and Helga Martha, born on 12 December 1928.

We do not know anything about the development of these children, except that Ottilie Anna Sophie and Helga Martha are said to have lived in foster families in 1932.

Maria Bockentin lived with her family at Rehmstraße 11 in Winterhude when she was admitted to the Eppendorf General Hospital as a patient on 30 May 1933. Here she was perceived as being very restless, not staying in bed, not answering questions and repeating stereotypical statements with sexual content.

At the request of her husband, who was now working as a male nurse, she was treated for malaria. Before the era of antibiotics, this treatment was considered the only effective therapy for progressive paralysis (a late consequence of syphilis, psychosis with neurological deficits). However, Maria Bockentin did not experience any significant improvement.

She was transferred to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital on 12 July 1933. According to the entry in the Friedrichsberg patient file, she appeared ‘invalid’.

Although she had already been diagnosed with ‘progressive paralysis’ at Eppendorf General Hospital, a lumbar puncture was performed in Friedrichsberg on 14 March 1933, a diagnostic tool used to detect infectious diseases such as neurosyphilis. (During this examination, a small amount of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is removed from the spinal canal using a special needle in the area of the lumbar vertebrae).

The reports about Maria Bockentin remained largely the same until she was transferred to the Langenhorn State Hospital on 3 June 1935: she had sung a lot, but had not answered questions. She was perceived as very loud, restless, bedridden and ‘libidinous’, had beaten herself and could hardly be kept in bed. There is no result of the lumbar puncture in the file. There are also no further explanations for the alleged libidinousness.

The Langenhorn staff also noted frequent and sudden changes of mood. She had torn bedclothes, was often agitated and violent towards fellow patients and was also very disruptive at night with loud yodeling and mobbing. She thought she was Queen Luise of Prussia and was very approachable when addressed as ‘Your Majesty’.

On 5 December 1935, Maria Bockentin and many other patients were transferred from the Langenhorn State Hospital to the then diaconal Rickling Asylum (‘Ricklinger Anstalten’) near Segeberg in Schleswig-Holstein. With these transfers, Hamburg wanted to reduce the cost of care and at the same time indirectly free up beds in the Friedrichsberg State Hospital. As part of the planned dissolution of the Friedrichsberg State Hospital in 1934/1935, the management of the Rickling Asylum had offered the Hamburg Senate to accept patients at particularly favorable cost rates. In Rickling, the daily rate was to be only 2.80 RM compared to 3.50 RM in the institution in Langenhorn.

Maria Bockentin was admitted to the Lindenhof home in the Rickling Asylum. According to the care reports from mid-1938, she was agitated and aggressive at times. She imagined that she was the sun or a majesty. During the day she sometimes occupied herself with knitting or peeling potatoes. At night, according to the report, she suddenly began to sing loudly.

Maria Bockentin remained in Rickling until 25 November 1941. From there, she was transferred to the Pfafferode State Sanatorium (‘Landesheilanstalt’) in a collective transport.

Pfafferode is a district of Mühlhausen in Thuringia (formerly the Prussian province of Saxony). From 1910, a ‘lunatic asylum’ was built on the grounds of the Pfafferode estate, which had 1200 beds in 1929. In 1940, patients were transferred from there to the Altscherbitz intermediate asylum in the north-west of Saxony and then on to the Brandenburg an der Havel killing center, and later to the Bernburg killing center, where they were murdered with carbon monoxide. After the official end of the first phase of Nazi ‘Euthanasia’ in August 1941 and thus the gas murders in the killing centers, murders continued in many psychiatric institutions, including Pfafferode: through overdoses of medication, neglect and systematic starvation. Of the people transferred to Pfafferode from other institutions, up to 94 percent died each year between 1941 and 1944.

Maria Bockentin's medical records in Pfafferode contain very little information about her state of illness, according to which the behavior patterns known from Rickling were largely repeated here. The last entry was on 9 August 1943, stating that her condition was unchanged.

Maria Bockentin died on 8 December 1943 in the Pfafferode State Sanatorium in Thuringia.

Stand: January 2025
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9052 Geburtsregister Nr. 2746/1889 (Pauline Elise Alexandrine Theilen), 2172 Geburtsregister Nr. 403/1888 (Maria Caroline Auguste Theilen), 114106 Geburtsregister Nr. 793/1910 (John Franz Gustav Bockentin), 8665 Heiratsregister Nr. 462/1909 (Maria Caroline Auguste Theilen/Franz Bockentin), 7845 Sterberegister Nr. 1319/1889 (Caroline Adolphine Theilen), 7851 Sterberegister Nr. 89/1890 (Pauline Elise Alexandrine Theilen), 7269 Sterberegister Nr. 15/1943 (Franz Bockentin), 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalten Abl. 1/1995 Nr. 21631 (Maria Bockentin); Institut für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin, Hamburg, Archiv, Akte der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg (Marie Caroline Auguste Bockentin); Thüringisches Staatsarchiv Gotha, Landesfachkrankenhaus für Psychiatrie und Neurologie Mühlhausen/Pfafferode Jg. 1943 Karton 3, Patientenakte Maria Bockentin (darin auch Akte aus Rickling). Michael Wunder, Die Transporte in die Ricklinger Anstalten, in: Peter von Rönn u.a., Wege in den Tod, Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 256 ff.; Michael Wunder, Die Auflösung von Friedrichsberg - Hintergründe und Folgen, Hamburger Ärzteblatt 4/90. Harald Jenner, Michael Wunder, Hamburger Gedenkbuch Euthanasie – Die Toten 1939-1945, Hamburg 2017, S. 106. Steffen Kubrik, Die Anfänge der Psychiatrie in Mühlhausen-Pfafferode (1912-1958), Mühlhäuser Beiträge, Sonderheft 23, Mühlhausen 2012; Ricklinger Anstalten https://landesverein.de/geschichte (Zugriff am 25.3.2021). A.G.http://psychiatrische-landschaften.net/Malariakur, Zugriff am 9.5.2024, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malariatherapie, Zugriff am 15.4.24; Progessive Paralyse, Definition: https://flexikon.doccheck.com/de/Progressive_Paralyse#:~:text=Im%20Allgemeinen%20bezeichnet%20der%20Begriff,bis%205%20Jahren%20zum%20Tod, Zugriff am 15.4.2024.