Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Erland Walter Friedmann * 1908

ohne Hamburger Adresse

ermordet am 23.9.1940 in der Tötungsanstalt Brandenburg an der Havel

further stumbling stones in ohne Hamburger Adresse :
Dr. Hans Bloch, Felix Cohn, Moraka Farbstein, Richard Guth, Martha Havelland, Albert Hirsch, Auguste Hirschkowitz, Sophie Kasarnowsky, Ernestine Levy, Richard Levy, Hannchen Lewin, Bronislawa Luise Dorothea Mattersdorf, Karl Friedrich Michael, Lucie Rothschild, Dorothea Dorthy Silberberg, Wilhelm Süsser, Anna Luise (Louise Hedwig) Weimann, Salo Weinberg

Erland Walter Friedmann born on 11 Apr. 1908 in Halle/Saale, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Without Stolperstein

Erland Walter Friedmann was born on 11 Apr. 1908 in Halle/Saale. His parents, the banker Richard Friedmann, born in Bernburg on 23 Oct. 1874, and Minna Bertha, née Fischer, born in Mainz on 12 July 1884, had resided at Merseburger Strasse 12 in Halle since 1901. The house had belonged to Richard Friedmann since 1906 and he was co-owner of the Friedmann & Weinstock banking business, founded in 1901. Although the bank continued to operate, the Friedmann family left Halle in 1917 and moved to Mainz to join Minna Bertha Friedmann’s mother residing at Rheinallee 55.

Nothing has been passed down about Erland Walter Friedmann’s childhood and adolescence. His presence in Hamburg can be traced back to 1928. In this year, he was for the first time a patient of the Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg) and was transferred from there to the Hamburg-Langenhorn State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn). In the still existing Friedrichsberg patient file card "trainee” is indicated as his occupation. In the years 1934/1935, the "Friedrichsberg-Langenhorn Plan” resulted in mass transfers of psychiatric patients within the Hamburg area. The aim of this plan was, in particular, to reduce the cost of so-called "lunatic” care. In 1935, the then Rickling Asylum (Ricklinger Anstalten) took over 180 patients from the Langenhorn State Hospital, including probably Erland Walter Friedmann. In the spring of 1938, Oskar Epha, the director of the Rickling Asylum, wanted to exchange Jewish residents for non-Jewish patients. Supposedly, he feared to lose the status of a non-profit organization and the associated tax benefits "unless German patients are admitted to our hospital without exception.” Four men were affected by this measure: Erland Walter Friedmann as well as Benjamin Engländer, Felix Cohn and Oscar Löwenthal (see corresponding entries). Starting on 22 Apr. 1938, they left the Rickling Asylum. Paula Fraenkel, also Jewish, was allowed to stay in Rickling until Sept. 1940 (see corresponding entry). It was not possible to find an explanation for this contradictory approach of the administration.

After a brief stay at the Langenhorn State Hospital, Erland Walter Friedmann spent the next two and a half years at the Düssin Estate in West Mecklenburg. The City of Hamburg had bought the later subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp at the end of 1938. The Düssin Estate accommodated 220 persons from Langenhorn with mental disabilities or mental illness who had to perform farm work there. Among them were, in addition to Erland Walter Friedmann, another six women and men of Jewish descent.

In the spring/summer of 1940, the "euthanasia” headquarters in Berlin, located at Tiergartenstrasse 4, planned a special operation aimed against Jews in public and private sanatoriums and nursing homes. It had the Jewish persons living in the institutions registered and moved together in what were officially so-called collection institutions. The Hamburg-Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt” Hamburg-Langenhorn) was designated the North German collection institution. All institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg were ordered to move the Jews living in their facilities there by 18 Sept. 1940.

As a result, Erland Walter Friedmann and the six other Jewish patients were taken from Düssin to Langenhorn on 14 Sept. 1940.

After all Jewish patients from the North German institutions had arrived in Langenhorn, they were taken to Brandenburg/Havel on 23 Sept. 1940. On the same day, they were killed with carbon monoxide in a converted part of the former penitentiary. Only one patient, Ilse Herta Zachmann, escaped this fate at first (see corresponding entry).

It was noted on the birth register entry of Friedmann Erland Walter that his death occurred on 30 Jan. 1941. The records office Chelm II had registered his death under number 377/1941. Those murdered in Brandenburg, however, were never in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German), a town east of Lublin. The former Polish sanatorium there no longer existed after SS units had murdered almost all patients on 12 Jan. 1940. Also, there was no German records office in Chelm. Its fabrication and the use of postdated dates of death served to disguise the killing operation and at the same time enabled the authorities to claim higher care expenses for periods extended accordingly.

For Erland Walter Friedmann, a personal address in Hamburg could not be established, making it impossible so far to determine an individual place where he could be commemorated with a Stolperstein.

We have no information about the fate of Erland Walter Friedmann’s parents.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 5; 9; StaH 133-1 III Staatsarchiv III, 3171-2/4 U.A. 4, Liste psychisch kranker jüdischer Patientinnen und Patienten der psychiatrischen Anstalt Langenhorn, die aufgrund nationalsozialistischer "Euthanasie"-Maßnahmen ermordet wurden, zusammengestellt von Peter von Rönn, Hamburg (Projektgruppe zur Erforschung des Schicksals psychisch Kranker in Langenhorn); 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.1939 bis 27.1.1941; Standesamt Halle a. d. Saale, Geburtsregister Nr. 1125/1908 Erland Walter Friedmann; Stadtarchiv Mainz, Nr. 1083/1884 Geburtsregister; Nr. 477/1905 Heiratsregister Richard Friedmann/Minna Berta Fischer; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Friedmann Erland Walter der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patientenakte Friedmann Erland Walter der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig; Adressbuch Halle; Stadtarchiv Mainz, umfassende Erläuterungen zum Personenstandseinträgen für die Familie Friedland vom 20.1.2016. Köhler, Ingo, Die "Arisierung" der Privatbanken im Dritten Reich, Verdrängung, Ausschaltung und die Frage der Wiedergutmachung, München 2005, S. 588; Sutter, Peter, Der sinkende Petrus, Rickling 1986, S. 173f., 247; Klee, Ernst, "Euthanasie" im NS-Staat, Die Vernichtung "lebensunwerten" Lebens, Frankfurt a. M., S. 391.
Zur Nummerierung häufig genutzter Quellen siehe Link "Recherche und Quellen".