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Olga Memleb
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Olga Memleb * 1908

Dorotheenstraße 50 (Hamburg-Nord, Winterhude)

HIER WOHNTE
OLGA MEMLEB
JG. 1908
EINGEWIESEN 1935
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 16.8.1943
AM STEINHOF WIEN
TOT AN DEN FOLGEN
12.5.1945

Olga Memleb, born 18.3.1908 in Tönning (North Frisia), admitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum ("Alsterdorfer Anstalten", now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on 8.5.1920, deported to the "Wagner von Jauregg – Curative and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna” ("Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien") in Vienna (also known as the institution "Am Steinhof"), died there on 12.5.1945

Dorotheenstraße 50 (Winterhude)

Olga Memleb was born on 18 March 1908 in Toenning, a North Frisian town. Her mother, Margarethe Memleb, unmarried at that time, was born on 11 Jan. 1887 in Stellingen (now a district of Hamburg), then still part of Prussia). She worked as a "maid." From Olga Memleb's biological father we only know the name: Johannes Schulz.

On 27 Dec. 1912 Margarethe Memleb married in Hamburg Benno August Adolph Sahm, a laborer, born on 13 May 1884 in Detmitten/East Prussia. The couple lived at Dorotheenstraße 50 in Winterhude, Olga Memleb probably lived there, too.

Margarethe and August Sahm had five children, of whom only one boy survived infancy.

Olga Memleb was first admitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum (Alsterdorfer Anstalten, now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on 30 March 1927. We do not know the reason for the admission. To the pension office in Flensburg, which was responsible for Olga's birthplace, she was described as incurable and in need of permanent care.

In March 1929, the young woman was incapacitated, and on 11 Oct. 1929 she was transferred to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital because she was "no longer suitable" for Alsterdorf. The reason, given in an excerpt from the Alsterdorf medical file intended for the Friedrichsberg state hospital, was that Olga Memleb suffered from imbecility with homicidal effects. (The term imbecility, which is no longer used today, refers to a reduction in intelligence or congenital intelligence weakness). As it is said in the file extract for Friedrichsberg, this was justified with "sexual accusations of the doctors, impairment ideas towards her environment, escape attempts with the help of undiscerning relatives."

According to staff reports, made during her stay at Friedrichsberg, Olga Memleb broke windows several times and was agitated and aggressive, but there were periods when she was perceived as "quiet, unobtrusive, silent and taciturn." Once she was "treated with a pack," i.e. wrapped in nettle cloths and doused with ice-cold water (nettle cloths, which were particularly tear-proof, were originally made of nettle fibers, later combined with cotton; they absorbed a particularly large amount of water).

On 29 March 1935, Olga Memleb was transferred back to the Alsterdorf Asylum. Here, the staff initially described her as friendly and calm. She was happy to return to Alsterdorf and "faithfully performed" light housework. But after she was repeatedly forbidden to go for walks because she expressed thoughts of escaping, Olga Memleb expressed suicidal intentions. She was transferred to the guardroom several times and fed "punishment food." Guardrooms (Wachsäle), originally established in the service of medical progress, were transformed in the course of the 19-thirties into coercive measures, where patients were kept quiet by means of medication, fixation and other measures.

The reports about Olga Memleb were largely repeated until she was transported to Vienna to the "Wagner von Jauregg – Curative and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna” (also known as the institution "Am Steinhof") on 16 Aug. 1943, together with 227 women and girls from Alsterdorf and 72 women and girls from the Curative and Nursing Home of Langenhorn. As in all such cases, the institution's physician, Gerhard Kreyenberg, ended Olga Memleb's medical record with the entry: "Transferred to Vienna due to severe damage to institution by bombing."

During the air raids on Hamburg at the end of July/beginning of August 1943 ("Operation Gomorrha"), the Alsterdorf Asylum also suffered bomb damage. After consultation with the health authorities , the director of the institution, SA member Pastor Friedrich Lensch, took the opportunity to transfer some of the residents who were considered "weak in labor, in need of care, or particularly difficult" to other sanatoriums and nursing homes.

The asylum in Vienna had been an intermediate facility for the Hartheim killing center near Linz during "Aktion-T4" (camouflage name for the Nazis' "euthanasia" program, so named after the headquarters of the Berlin euthanasia center at Tiergartenstraße 4). After the official end of the killings in the killing centers, mass murder continued in previous intermediate institutions, i.e. also in the Viennese institution itself: by overdosing with medication and non-treatment of diseases, but above all by deprivation of food. By the end of 1945, 257 of the 300 women and girls from Hamburg had died, 196 of them from Alsterdorf.

Among them was Olga Memleb. For years, she had weighed between 53 kg and 57 kg in the Alsterdorf Asylum; before she was deported to Vienna, her weight was 42.5 kg. The Viennese part of her medical record says that she weighed 44 kg in January 1944 and 35 kg in December. At the beginning of 1945, it was noted that she never made herself known, never expressed any wishes, but only stated that she wanted to return to Alsterdorf. At the beginning of May, she was said to be "physically deteriorated" and in great need of care.

On 12 May 1945, Olga Memleb died, allegedly of gastroenteritis (inflammation of the stomach, small and large intestine) and decubitus (pressure sore).

Translation: Elisabeth Wendland

Stand: April 2023
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9166 Geburtsregister Nr. 7/1887 Margaretha Memleb, 9547 Heiratsregister Nr. 581 Margaretha Memleb/ Benno August Adolph Sahm; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Patientenakte Nr. 154 (Olga Memleb); Peter von Rönn, Der Transport nach Wien, in: Peter von Rönn u.a., Wege in den Tod, Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 425 ff.; Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 35, 283 ff., 331 ff.; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwangsbad Zugriff am 17.11.2021.