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Hermann Quast (sein Kopf wird für die Fotografie gestützt)
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Hermann Quast * 1936

Benittstraße 26 (Hamburg-Mitte, Finkenwerder)

HIER WOHNTE
HERMANN QUAST
JG. 1936
EINGEWIESEN 1940
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 1943
HEILANSTALT EICHBERG
ERMORDET 18.9.1943

Hermann Quast, born on 24.3.1936 in Hamburg, admitted to the Alsterdorfer Anstalten on 10.1.1940, transferred to the "Landesheilanstalt Eichberg" on 6.8.1943, murdered on 18.9.1943

Benittstraße 26

Hermann Quast was born as the third child of the housewife Hildegard Quast, née Fenske, (*Jan 15, 1912). At birth he weighed 3 kg. His mother was married in second marriage to Heinrich Quast (*May 9, 1908), after her first husband Heinrich Hennings (* Oct 30, 1907), a skilled plumber, whom she had married in 1932, had drowned in the Elbe River as a result of an accident in 1934.

After her schooling, she had attended the vocational school in Wilhelmsburg for one year and then accepted a position as a domestic servant. In 1935 she had married a second time and brought her two children Hertha (*Aug 14, 1933) and Heinrich (Nov 28, 1934) into the marriage. Together with his father, mother and two half-siblings, Hermann lived at Benittstraße 26 III in Hamburg-Finkenwärder, as it was called at the time.

Hermann Quast's father had grown up in Finkenwerder and had attended school here, as had his six siblings. After years of seafaring, however, he took a job as a driller at the German shipyard on the Rüsch peninsula in Finkenwerder at the time of his marriage. His family members resided in Finkenwerder and in Neuenfelde.
We know nothing about Hermann Quast's first year of life. However, at the age of one year and five months, from August 3 to August 14, 1937, Hermann was hospitalized in the Rothenburgsort Children's Hospital. Why, we do not know. But here it says for the first time in the file: "The child appears to be neither mentally nor physically developed according to his age." Did this bring him into the focus of the National Socialist authorities?

On Nov 17, 1938 the "Fü-Akte" (welfare file) was created about the two and a half year old Hermann. Here it can be read: "...completely retarded in development, now walks somewhat by hand, does not yet speak and hardly eats with a spoon. In the examinations of the weighing hour, mongoloid idiocy was diagnosed."

Two years later, on Oct 27, 1939, a "psychiatric examination" was carried out by the Hamburg Youth Welfare Office, including "hereditary-biological investigations", "reason for examination?: placement".

It is unclear on whose initiative this measure originated. Was it the parents themselves who, after the birth of another child in June 1938, possibly no longer had the strength to do justice to all four children in the same way? Was it state authorities? Was it someone in their environment who believed that the little boy would be better off in an institution that specialized in helping people with disabilities than in his family at 26 Benittstraße? Or were there other reasons? We do not know any more than we know the reaction of his parents to the request for an examination.

During the examination on October 27, 1939, the doctors Hülsemann, Ltd. senior physician, and Gräfe, assistant physician, at the Hamburg Youth Welfare Office, Dept. II B, came to the conclusion: "It is a case of mongoloid idiocy. Hermann should therefore be transferred to the Alsterdorf institutions, especially since his mother was expecting another child and could no longer care for him. A "referral slip" was attached to the report, i.e., the social administration would cover the costs.

On January 10, 1940, Hermann was admitted to the Alsterdorf Institutions.

On the day of admission, a doctor wrote about the little patient "[The child] is very restless, so that he must be strapped down." Hermann could not eat on his own and did not know when to go to the toilet. He had to be cared for and fed, but was friendly and affectionate, according to the report of July 10, 1941.

On July 14, 1941, Gerhard Kreyenberg, head physician of the Alsterdorf institutions, confirmed to the "Sozialverwaltung Sonderstelle" that an extension of Hermann Quast's stay in this institution was necessary, which was also confirmed by Prof. Schäfer, chairman of the Alsterdorf board, on October 30, 1942.

On August 6, 1943, Kreyenberg closed Hermann Quast's medical record with the entry: "Transferred, since the Alsterdorf institutions are destroyed."

Hermann Quast was sent to the Eichberg sanatorium and nursing home near Eltville in Hesse.

He was thus one of a total of 26 children and 44 men from Alsterdorf who arrived at Eichberg on August 8, 1943. Some of the new arrivals wore straitjackets and were loaded - according to one report - "like cattle onto trucks" and taken to Eichberg.

The "Landesheilanstalt Eichberg" on the Rhine (today's "Vitos Klinik Eichberg") had been founded in 1849 on the grounds of the Ebersbach monastery. The facility functioned as a transit station for euthanasia patients to the Hadamar extermination facility until August 1941. In the winter of 1940/41, the head physician Mennecke set up a "children's department" in which mentally and physically handicapped children and adolescents were "euthanized." This department was headed by the physician Walter Schmidt. He administered to the patients morphine/scopolamine or sleeping pills and anesthetics dissolved in sugar water, such as Luminal, which led to death. A former nurse later reported:

"Dr. Schmidt came frequently, sometimes two or three times in one day ... through my ward. ... He would point his finger at individual patients and say that he no longer liked this or that one. Dr. Schmidt usually carried a piece of paper in his pocket on which he wrote down the names of various patients. Sometimes there were several, sometimes only one patient ... Sometimes he had such patients brought immediately to the doctor's room, sometimes he also indicated a certain time when he wanted to see the patient in the doctor's room. The nurse on duty then had to take the patient to Dr. Schmidt. When I was on duty, I was with Dr. Schmidt in the doctor's room and, as is customary, I did the handouts for him. Whenever such a patient was in the doctor's office, Dr. Schmidt would tell me to prepare a morphine injection. He also always indicated the quantity of morphine that I should fill into the syringe. Sometimes it was 10 cc, sometimes 20 cc, sometimes even more. It also happened that I had to fill the syringes with Luminal, depending on what kind of toxins I had in mind. After I had prepared the appropriate syringe in each case, he injected the same intravenously. After Dr. Schmidt had administered the injection, he usually left the doctor's office without saying a word. After two or three minutes, the patient was dead. The nurses on duty then collected the body from the doctor's room."

On September 18, 1943 - six weeks after his admission - Hermann Quast also died at 5 a.m. in Eichberg, according to his death certificate. The cause of death was recorded as heart failure and mental illness.

Can we believe the information? None of the 26 children who arrived in Eichberg on August 8, 1943, coming from the "Alsterdorfer Anstalten", survived.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Julia Klindworth/Hannelore Fielitz

Quellen: Archiv der Evangelischen Stiftung Alsterdorf, V0 23, Hermann Quast; Stadtarchiv Eltville am Rhein; www.alsterdorf.de/ueber-uns/geschichte.html; Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr. Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1988, Ernst Klee, `Euthanasie´ im NS-Staat. Die `Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens´, Frankfurt a. M. 1985.