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Georg Peters * 1872

Woldsenweg 5 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)

Verhaftet 1936 und 1938
"Landesheilanstalt" Weilmünster
ermordet 06.04.1944

further stumbling stones in Woldsenweg 5:
Ella Davidsohn, Walter Davidsohn, Dr. Marie Anna Jonas, Dr. Alberto Jonas, Marie Therese Moser, Bernard Moser, Cloe Neuburger, Fritz Neuburger, Ruth Neuhaus

Georg Peters, born 7/6/1872 in Tating, died 4/6/1944 at the Insane Asylum Weilmünster in Oberlahn County

Woldsenweg 5

Georg Jakob Peters, born July 6th, 1872 in Tating in Eiderstedt, was the second of ten children of the farmer Owe Peters and his wife Ingeborg, née Hostrup. He attended high school in Husum up to the 9th grade, followed by a commercial apprenticeship in nearby Garding. In 1890, he came to Hamburg to attend a commercial school. In his professional career, Peters not only worked in the commercial sector, but also as a foreign-language correspondent, language teacher and caretaker. From 1899, he was employed in Mexico, from where he went to Bolivia in 1904. In 1906, he left South America for Africa, working in Cameroon until 1908. After that, he went to Vienna to work as a Spanish-language correspondent for the A. Janowitz Company. During World War I, he returned to Hamburg in 1915 and found a one-year job at the Cuban Consulate General. From 1916 on, he owned several companies, with an interruption from 1920 to 1925, when he worked for Stinnes. From 1927 to 1931, he was commercially active in Chile.

Back in Hamburg, he attempted to cure a venereal disease by a malaria cure typical for those days at the Friedrichsberg Insane Asylum. After that, he only occasionally was able to earn some money, using his knowledge of languages to do translations. Mainly, however, he was dependent on welfare payments.

Already in 1906, he had to appear in court for "indecent behavior” pursuant to Art. 183 of the Reich Penal Code. His marriage to Hedwig, née Kratzenstein in 1908 was divorced in 1910 because of his homosexual orientation. In 1927, he eluded a trial for homosexual acts pursuant to Art. 175 of the Reich Penal Code by escaping to Chile. The charges were dropped after his return to Germany in 1931.

From May 31st to September 18th, 1936, Georg Peters was in the Hamburg City remand jail for "procuration (Art. 175)”; subsequently being transferred to the mental hospital in Hamburg-Langenhorn 31 to have his state of mind checked. From October 30th to December 3rd, 1936, he was again in remand. After the "insanity” proceedings pursuant to Art. 51 Reich Penal Code had been stopped, the Hamburg Police admitted him to the old age home in Hamburg-Langenhorn. In April 1938, he left the institution without permission and lived illegally in Berlin and Cologne. In July 938, the Berlin High Court sentenced him to jail because of several unpaid fines for forgery of official documents. After his release in October 1938, he found a job as a caretaker and a lodging with Ella Davidsohn and her son Walter at Woldsenweg 5.

After a former sex partner from Farmsen had identified Georg Peters in a police picture file, he was again arrested in November 1938. In August 1939, the Hamburg High Court sentenced him to containment in a Mental Hospital pursuant to Arts 175, 42 b and 429 after the public medical officer Wigand Quickert had diagnosed him with "progressive paralysis” (following a syphilis infection). From January 30th, 1939, he was at the Langenhorn Mental Hospital until he was transferred to the Weilmünster institution in Oberlahn County in the course of a "general relocation operation” on June 8th, 1943, where he died on April 6th, 1944. More than 6,000 women and men were transferred from the "interim institution” in Weilmünster to the killing institution in Hadamar. Georg Peters must be counted among the many patients who perished in Weilmünster due to malnutrition, neglected care and also intentional active medicamentous killing.

Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: February 2018
© Bernhard Rosenkranz (†)/Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH, 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 7900/39; StaH, 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferung 16; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn, Ablieferung 1995/1, Zentralkartei; Rosenkranz/Bollmann/Lorenz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung, S. 244.