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Grabstätte der histologischen Präparate auf dem Ehrenfeld für Verfolgte der NS-Herrschaft der Geschwister-Scholl-Stiftung, Grablage: Bo 73, Nr. 155
© Privatbesitz

Werner Hammerich * 1940

Langenhorner Chaussee 560 (Hamburg-Nord, Langenhorn)

ERMORDET IN DER
"KINDERFACHABTEILUNG"
DER HEIL- UND PFLEGEANSTALT
LANGENHORN

WERNER HAMMERICH
GEB. 10.4.1940
ERMORDET 27.3.1941

further stumbling stones in Langenhorner Chaussee 560:
Gerda Behrmann, Uwe Diekwisch, Peter Evers, Elke Gosch, Claus Grimm, Marianne Harms, Hillene Hellmers, Helga Heuer, Waltraud Imbach, Inge Kersebaum, Hella Körper, Dieter Kullak, Helga Liebschner, Theo Lorenzen, Jutta Müller, Ingrid Neuhaus, Traudel Passburg, Edda Purwin, Angela Quast, Erwin Sänger, Hermann Scheel, Gottfried Simon, Monika Ziemer

Werner Hammerich, born on 10.4.1940 in Hamburg, killed on 27.3.1941 in the "children's ward of the Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home”

Asklepios Clinic North Ochsenzoll,
Henny-Schütz-Allee, memorial house 25, entrance Langenhorner Chaussee 560

Werner Hammerich was born in Hamburg-Wandsbek on April 10, 1940. His mother, Paula Hoffmann, née Hammerich, had been a widow since 1938 and had given birth to Werner as her fourth child. He was an illegitimate child, baptized Protestant and grew up in her apartment in Hamburg-Horn at Wilhelm-Wolf-Weg 44 (this street, which branched off Helma-Steinbach-Weg, no longer exists today) with his siblings.

Werner could not be breastfed and initially refused to feed. Two days after his birth, Dr. Siegel referred him to the Wandsbek General Hospital with a diagnosis of "Mongolism”. Dr. Andresen, who treated him there from 12 to 22 April 1940, also diagnosed "typical Mongolism” and noted that Werner no longer showed any weakness in drinking. This case was then reported to the Main Health Office. Werner was taken to Wandsbek Hospital again for a day on October 15, 1940, and Dr. Rübbe confirmed the diagnosis.

In March 1941, Paula Hoffmann received a request from the welfare authorities to take her child to the health department. On March 10, 1941, she brought Werner to the "Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home” with a certificate from the Main Health Office and a diagnosis of "mental illness”. Dr. Knigge noted: "According to the certificate from the Main Health Office, the child was brought by the mother for treatment.” Werner only lived there for seventeen days.

Friedrich Knigge recorded the last three days: "25. III. 42. is somnolent [dazed], breathing accelerated. 26. III. 42. temperature 38.2 degrees in the morning, 40.2 degrees in the afternoon. Pulse small, flying. Appearances of pneumonia 27. III. 42. Exitus letalis [fatal outcome] Diagnosis: Mongoloid idiocy. At autopsy it was found that the diagnosis was not bronchial pneumonia, as had been assumed, but bilateral croupous pneumonia. Dr. Knigge”

The mother received the following telegram on the same day at 4:30 p.m.: "Son Werner deceased, request birth certificate for Langenhorn institution” and four days later another: "Request immediate call 57 80 01 Langenhorn”.

Werner Hammerich was the first child to be killed in the "children's ward of the Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home”. According to his own testimony before the district court on January 15, 1946, Friedrich Knigge gave him an injection of the sleeping pill Luminal on March 25. As a result, Werner died of pneumonia on March 27, 1941 at 2:30 p.m. in House F 7. In the protocol and the death certificate, Knigge stated "Mongoloid idiocy, bronchopneunomy” as the cause of death, signed by Dr. Friedrich Ofterdinger and stamped by the health authorities.

Werner was 11 months, 2 weeks and 3 days old.

Seven days later, Werner Hammerich was transferred from Langenhorn to Ohlsdorf Cemetery Chapel 12 at 9:00 a.m. on April 3, 1941. He was buried at 10:30 a.m. by the funeral director Schröder, Martinistraße, at the expense of the social administration, grave location Bf 66, row 47, no. 25. His grave is no longer preserved.


After the war, Friedrich Knigge gave the following justification in a hearing before the examining magistrate at the Hamburg District Court regarding the Werner Hammerich case: The mother had agreed to the "treatment”. She had "even (wanted) the treatment so that her healthy children would not continue to be frightened by the child, who kept making horrible faces”.
Friedrich Knigge feared that an autopsy would prove the death and therefore killed the children with Luminal injections, a sleeping pill. Fever and pneumonia were the result; the children suffered a slow and agonizing death. In most of the children's death certificates, as in Werner's case, the words "bronchopneumonia” refer to this killing.

In her testimony before the examining magistrate at the Hamburg District Court on January 15, 1948, Werner's mother, the widow Paula Hoffmann, née Hammerich, recalled: "[...] the doctor asked me if I knew how the child was. I replied: 'Yes'. He then explained that an operation would be carried out on the child if I gave my consent. The purpose of the operation would be to make the child healthy. He then asked me what I would say if the child died during the procedure. I refuse to answer here what response I gave to the doctor. My recollection of the events is that I took Werner to the Langenhorn hospital the next day and received a telegram a day later that Werner had died.”

In 2006, the physician Marc Burlon made a shocking discovery: in the basement of the Eppendorf University Hospital, in the neuropathology collection, he found the histological specimens of Werner Hammerich together with those of the children Gerda Behrmann, Marianne Harms and Dieter Kullak, victims of the "euthanasia” crimes in the "children's ward of the Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home”, and Agnes Erna Petersen (for a biography, see www. stolpersteine-hamburg.de), victims of the "euthanasia” crimes in the "children's ward” of the Rothenburgsort children's hospital.

On September 15, 2012, they were buried together in a public funeral service at the Ohlsdorf cemetery, the field of honor for victims of Nazi persecution of the Geschwister Scholl Foundation, grave location Bo 73, No. 155.

Translation: Beate Meyer
Stand: November 2024
© Margot Löhr

Quellen: StaH, 213-12 Staatsanwaltschaft, 0013 Bd. 060 Sonderakte Bd. 40, Schirbaum, Gottfried u. a., Akte 28357, 0017 Bd. 001, Bayer Dr. Wilhelm u. a., S. 69, 132 f., 159 f.; StaH, 332-5 Standesämter, Sterbefallsammelakten, 64155 u. 193/1941 Werner Hammerich; StaH, 332-5 Standesämter, Sterberegister, 9925 u. 193/1941 Werner Hammerich; StaH, 352-5 Standesämter, Todesbescheinigungen, 1941 Sta 1b Nr. 193 Werner Hammerich; StaH, 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn, Abl. 2000/01 Nr. 20 Akte 28357; Standesamt Hamburg-Wandsbek, Geburtsregister, Nr. 390/1940 Werner Hammerich; Archiv Friedhof Ohlsdorf, Beerdigungsregister 1941, Nr. 2911; Hildegard Thevs: Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Rothenburgsort. Biographische Spurensuche, Hamburg 2011, S. 204 (Agnes Petersen).