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Wilhelm Süsser * 1892

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, 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, Anna Luise (Louise Hedwig) Weimann, Salo Weinberg

Wilhelm Süsser, born on 6 Nov. 1892 in Frankfurt/Main, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Without Stolperstein

Wilhelm Süsser was one of three sons of the Frankfurt merchant Hermann Süsser and his wife Flora, née Fuld. The family was of the Jewish faith. One of Wilhelm’s brothers, whose name we do not know, died in World War I, the other emigrated to the USA.

Wilhelm Süsser developed inconspicuously in his early childhood. He learned to walk and speak according to his age and no particular developmental problems were noticed. However, he could not meet the requirements at school. Inadequate school performance was accompanied by extremely bad behavior. He was shifted from one school to another until he had eventually attended seven schools in Frankfurt. The principal of the Souchay Mittelschule (middle school) later made the following remarks about Wilhelm Süsser and his father: "I have been a teacher for 28 years and in this long period, I have not met any pupil about whom I have formed a worse opinion than about Süsser and hardly any father about whom I came to a more unfavorable judgment with regard to parenting quality than about Süsser’s father: submissive to the point of sycophancy, sugary, both inwardly raw and untrue, constantly twisting and turning in conversation and always looking for new ways out when a statement is nailed down. I mention my assessment of the father because it seems possible to me that he is involved in the admission to the insane asylum, the cause of which I do not know, through statements, which in that case one would certainly not be able to trust. [...] His [Wilhelm’s] behavior was generally described by the teachers as brazen. Most of what he did had a very wicked character. For instance, I remember that he stuck a stick in the spokes of a moving cyclist, thereby bringing him down. From the Untermainbrücke Bridge, he threw rocks at a moving train. He cut a face at my wife when she looked out the window once. He behaved roughly and impertinently toward his mother, so that the afflicted woman once wrote to me for help.”

During his subsequent attendance of business school in 1907, doubts repeatedly arose as to whether Wilhelm Süsser was "normally disposed.” According to a teacher, Wilhelm Süsser "sat there repeatedly for the entire class and laughed, was rebellious against orders, uneven in his achievements and in his homework. In recent times, however, he has given less cause for complaint, it seemed as if the constant influence of the school did have an impact on him, but nevertheless his nervousness and easy irritability always surfaced from time to time.”

On 22 May 1907, at the age of 14, Wilhelm Süsser was admitted to the "Institution for lunatics and epileptics” ("Anstalt für Irre und Epileptische”) in Frankfurt/Main with the consent of his father and remained there until October of the same year. His father stated at the time: "At home, [he] was incompatible after all, screaming, locking himself up, beating up his brothers and sisters, becoming violent against his parents, and hurling the worst insults at them.” The admission examination showed that "some school knowledge was missing, but the ability to comprehend, the memory, the ability to combine were not significantly reduced.” After he had been transferred from one department to another because "he could not be kept anywhere,” he was discharged as uncured on 13 Oct. 1907.

Wilhelm Süsser began an apprenticeship in a hardware store. His performance was considered sufficient. On 18 Nov. 1907, however, he returned to the Frankfurt institution. Following his discharge in Mar. 1908, he began another apprenticeship, this time in a steam boiler factory in Offenbach. There, it was certified to him that "during his apprenticeship, he endeavored to familiarize himself with all branches of the commercial profession, and that he was furthermore always punctual and diligent and carried out the work assigned to him to my satisfaction.” The apprentice’s master had not noticed anything with respect to mental "inferiority”; on the contrary, he considered him intelligent. Despite this positive evaluation, his master did not hire him after the training to became a commercial clerk (merchant’s assistant), because Wilhelm Süsser was "somewhat too curious and cheeky, which is why the employer-employee relationship was terminated by mutual agreement.”

Wilhelm Süsser’s landlady in Offenbach reported that he had behaved quite crazily, had stalked girls on the street, had been the mockery of the street boys, and was only treated as a "Schote” (a swear word for crazy person, fool).

On 20 June 1910, admission to the Heppenheim State "lunatic asylum” (Landesirrenanstalt Heppenheim) took place. There, too, a senior physician attested to him an incompatible, irritable, violent, unruly character. On 16 Aug. 1910, Wilhelm escaped from the institution. He then lived in Worms with an aunt by the name of Fuld, perhaps a sister of his mother. The aunt stated that she had felt threatened by Wilhelm and that she had often been forced to lock herself in as a protective measure against him.

At the end of 1910/beginning of 1911, Wilhelm Süsser spent two months in the Jakobische sanatorium and nursing home in Sayn (Jakobische Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Sayn) near Koblenz. During one of his father’s visits reportedly the two had accused each other of being responsible for one for the other’s misfortune. During his subsequent stay with his parents, Wilhelm Süsser is said to have threatened his father and later, when he left his parents’ house again, to have stolen 200 RM (reichsmark) from him. Wilhelm Süsser resided in various regions, interrupted by short stays in institutions, including the Eichberg State Sanatorium and Nursing Home (Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Eichberg) at Eltville near Wiesbaden. In Feb. 191, he prematurely had to quit an apprenticeship as a gardener that had begun in Oct. 1912. He had allegedly robbed a journeyman for no reason and severely mistreated him. Several thefts earned him a one-week prison sentence on 7 Apr. 1913.

At the end of May 1913, Wilhelm Süsser was again in the Eichberg institution. The intended legal incapacitation did not occur because on 4 Nov. 1913, Wilhelm Süsser managed to shake and refute the testimonies of the witnesses, especially those of his mother, in every respect. The report from Eichberg prepared for the process of incapacitation, summarized the following: "In the case of Süsser, we are dealing with a person who has a heavy hereditary burden, who has led quite a changeful life from his youth. If we analyze his life path, we find that it is the moral defects that prevent an orderly way of life, while there is no significant gap in his intellectual abilities. Almost all assessments suggest that his intelligence is intact, but that his behavior leaves much to be desired.”

Wilhelm Süsser was released from the Eichberg institution on 3 Oct. 1914. His next known station was working as a male nurse in the Berlin-Buch Asylum from 22 July 1915 to 11 Oct. 1915, which was ended when he was called up for military service. At the end of Jan. 1917, his time in the military ended. Wilhelm Süsser was then briefly employed again as a male nurse at various places until he was sentenced to a prison term, which led to his admission to the Lichtenberg municipal "lunatic asylum” (Städtische Irrenanstalt zu Lichtenberg) (Herzberge) in Berlin on 2 Dec. 1918. From there, Wilhelm Süsser was transferred to the Berlin-Buch Asylum in July 1919 and released on 29 Mar. 1920 with the diagnosis of "psychopath.”

We do not know when and why Wilhelm Süsser took up residence in Hamburg. In any case, he was admitted to the Hamburg-Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Hamburg-Friedrichsberg) on 10 Oct. 1922. There he was to be examined by a doctor in connection with criminal proceedings for robbery. The expert came to the conclusion that Wilhelm Süsser "was not in a state of unconsciousness or pathological disturbance of mental activity at the time of the committal of the punishable acts by which his free determination of will would have been excluded.” On 16 Mar. 1923, he was sentenced to three years and six months imprisonment in a penitentiary, with seven months of pretrial detention calculated against his sentence. The prison term was to end on 16 Feb. 1926. Wilhelm Süsser feared his transfer to the Hamburg-Langenhorn State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn), which he tried to prevent. He asked the prison doctor several times to stay in the Fuhlsbüttel prison and to isolate him there. Nevertheless, in Dec. 1923 the prison doctor committed him to the Hamburg-Langenhorn State Hospital "because of mental illness.” Admission to a closed institution was ordered under Section 22 of the Hamburg Verhältnisgesetz (i.e., Verhältnis der Verwaltung zur Rechtspflege, a law regulating the relations of the governing authority to the administration of justice), which permitted committal to maintain public order or for one’s own protection.

At the beginning of 1927, Wilhelm Süsser’s legal incapacitation was initiated and then also decided. He received a Hamburg merchant as a guardian.

Wilhelm Süsser’s patient file contains two newspaper articles dating from Mar. 1929 in which it is reported that on 10 May 1926 in Wiesbaden "the Süsser widow residing on Kleiststrasse was brutally murdered and found robbed.” The appeal of the offender sentenced to death had remained unsuccessful, but the death sentence had been converted into a life imprisonment by way of pardon. The murder victim was Wilhelm Süsser’s mother. It is not known how the death of his mother affected Wilhelm Süsser.

On 16 Oct. 1930, Wilhelm Süsser was transferred to the Lübeck-Strecknitz "sanatorium,” where patients from Hamburg were repeatedly accommodated based on a contract concluded between Hamburg and Lübeck. Wilhelm Süsser lived there until 1940 and no change in his condition was detected.

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.

Wilhelm Süsser arrived in Langenhorn on 16 Sept. 1940. On 23 September, he was transported to Brandenburg/Havel with a further 135 patients from North German institutions. The transport reached the city in the Mark (March) on the same day. In the part of the former penitentiary that had been converted into a gas-killing facility, the patients were immediately driven into the gas chamber 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 Wilhelm Süsser’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 or 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.

An address of Wilhelm Süsser in Hamburg is not known, so that no individual place can be determined where he could be commemorated with a Stolperstein.

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

Stand: March 2020
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 8; 5; 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; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Nr. 14795 Wilhelm Süsser; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Wilhelm Süsser der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; IMGWF Lübeck, Archiv, Patientenakte Wilhelm Süsser der Heilanstalt Lübeck-Strecknitz; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig.
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