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Martha Havelland * 1879

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, Erland Walter Friedmann, Richard Guth, 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

Martha Havelland, born on 4 Oct. 1879 in Bleicherode (Nordhausen administrative district/Thuringia), murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Without Stolperstein

Martha Havelland was born on 4 Oct. 1879 in Bleicherode as the youngest of the five children of the merchant Hermann Havelland, born on 15 July 1839 in Nordhausen, and his wife Helene, née Adler. The oldest of the children, Paul, was born on 23 Dec. 1869 in Nordhausen. In 1871, the still small family of the Jewish faith moved to Bleicherode in today’s Nordhausen administrative district in Thuringia. The town featured a large Jewish Community.
Three of Martha’s siblings were also born in Bleicherode: Siegmund Havelland, on 15 Dec. 1871; Nathan Havelland, on 1 Jan. 1873; and Elise Havelland, on 19 Oct. 1874. The family left Bleicherode in 1891 to an unknown destination.

Only in 1933, a trace re-emerges when Martha Havelland was admitted to the "Ms. Clausen Private Institution” ("Privatanstalt Fräulein Clausen”) in Friedrichsfeld, located in the municipality of Prinzenmoor near Rendsburg, on 11 February. In 1883, a private "institution for ladies with nervous and emotional disorders” was built on the site of a former glassworks. The residents maintained the park around the main building and tended the extensive fruit and vegetable garden. The patients mostly came from "more refined” families that could afford the upscale accommodation. A passage in a brochure of the institution stated, "The Friedrichsfeld estate, not far from the Eider, offers a quiet and healthy stay to ladies who are suffering from nervous and emotional disorders and do not want to go to a large institution but nevertheless cannot stay with their family.” Between 1910 and 1942, the two sisters Margarethe and Cäcilie Clausen managed their institution, capable of accommodating about 35 female occupants. After the private institution was closed in 1942, the patients were transferred to Schleswig, probably to the local psychiatric institution in Schleswig-Stadtfeld, and to the diaconal institution in Kropp. Friedrichsfeld was taken over by the provincial administration and, after conversions, set up as a supervised home for 40 children. After a prolonged period of vacancy, looting, and devastation, the buildings burned down.

Martha Havelland was admitted from Friedrichsfeld to the Hamburg Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt” Hamburg-Langenhorn) on 18 Sept. 1940. This transfer was preceded by the following developments:

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.

On 23 Sept. 1940, Martha Havelland, together with 135 other patients from the North German institutions, was transported to Brandenburg/Havel. In the part of the former penitentiary converted into a gas-killing facility, the patients were driven into the gas chamber on the same day and murdered with carbon monoxide. Only Ilse Herta Zachmann escaped this fate at first (see corresponding entry).

It is not known whether, and if so, when relatives became aware of Martha Havelland’s death. In all documented death notices, it was claimed that the person concerned had died in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German). Those murdered in Brandenburg, however, were never in Chelm/Cholm, 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.

The fate of the other members of the Havelland family lies largely in the dark. Only concerning Nathan Havelland, it is known that he lived in Berlin. In 1915, he had established a button factory on Kurstrasse in Berlin-Mitte, which was forcibly liquidated in 1939. He was deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt on 14 Sept. 1942 and died there on 10 Mar. 1944. For Nathan Havelland, a Stolperstein is located in Berlin-Wilmersdorf at Deidesheimer Strasse 9.

Martha Havelland never lived in Hamburg apart from her five-day involuntary stay in the Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home.” Therefore, no individual place in Hamburg could be established to commemorate her with a Stolperstein.

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

Stand: April 2020
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 3; 5; 7; 8; 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; Kreisarchiv Nordhausen, Mitteilung vom 10. 5. 2016; Gemeinde Friedrichsfeld, A/316 Alphabetisches Verzeichnis zum Melderegister, A/1549 Personenstandsregister; Standesamt Bleicherode, Geburtsregister Nr. 9/1874 Elise Havelland, Geburtsregister Nr. 102/1879 Martha Havelland; Gemeinde Prinzenmoor, Melderegisterauszug Friedrichsfeld 1933; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig. Rust, Jürgen (Red.), Prinzenmoor in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Prinzenmoor 2008, S. 124ff.
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