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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

Marianne Harms * 1940

Langenhorner Chaussee 560 (Hamburg-Nord, Langenhorn)

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

MARIANNE HARMS
GEB. 30.4.1940
ERMORDET 19.11.1941

further stumbling stones in Langenhorner Chaussee 560:
Gerda Behrmann, Uwe Diekwisch, Peter Evers, Elke Gosch, Claus Grimm, Werner Hammerich, 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

Marianne Harms, born on 30.4.1940 in Bardowick, killed on 19.11.1941 in the "children's ward of the Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home” (Kinderfachabteilung)

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

Marianne Harms was born on April 30, 1940 in Bardowick in the district of Lüneburg. The birth was without complications. She was the daughter of Elfriede Irmgard, née Meyer, and the farmer Hermann Harms and was baptized an Evangelical Lutheran. She initially lived with her parents and two older siblings in Bardowick. She was breastfed by her mother for four months.

When Marianne was six weeks old, symptoms of hydrocephalus were noticed at the maternity clinic. After treatment with drops, which had no effect, she was taken by her mother to the Eppendorf University Hospital on September 2, 1940. She stayed there for three months, during which time she fell ill with meningitis. After that, Marianne could no longer reach for objects held in front of her and her mother assumed that she had gone blind. Marianne could not sit or speak, she was silent.

With a certificate from the Lüneburg State Health Office, Marianne was admitted to the "Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home” on October 8, 1941 at the age of one year and five months. Dr. Friedrich Knigge admitted her to ward M 10 with the diagnosis "hydrocephalus internus” (hydrocephalus, a pathological enlargement of the head). Three weeks later, on October 26, 1941, she was once again taken to the Eppendorf University Hospital for an ophthalmological examination. There she was diagnosed with complete blindness.

Three weeks later, three days before Marianne's death, Friedrich Knigge recorded her physical condition with increasing fever, "moaning” and skin changes. "Lying away the night like this” was how he described the last hours before her death. On November 19, 1941, Marianne died in the "Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home” at 8:00 am. In the protocol and the death certificate, Knigge gave the following cause of death: "Hydrocephalus, bilateral amaurosis [complete blindness], bronchopneunomy [pneumonia]”.

Knigge killed with Luminal injections, a sleeping pill. Fever and pneumonia were the result; the children suffered a slow and agonizing death. In most death certificates, as in Marianne's case, the words "bronchopneumonia” refer to this killing.

Marianne was 1 year, 6 months, 2 weeks and 6 days old. The place of her burial is not known.


After the war, Knigge commented on the accusations of murder and euthanasia in the "children's ward” at Langenhorn Hospital. In a letter dated June 13, 1945 to the criminal investigation department via Prof. Rudolf Degkwitz, senior official of the Hamburg health authorities, he only admitted to euthanasia in ten to eleven "mentally ill and deformed” children, which he considered to be justified by the order of the "Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Suffering”. He concealed the name of Marianne Harms.

The physician Marc Burlon made a shocking discovery in 2006. In the basement of the Eppendorf University Hospital, in the neuropathology collection, he found the histological specimens of Marianne Harms together with those of the children Gerda Behrmann, Werner Hammerich and Dieter Kullak (biographys see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de), victims of the "euthanasia” crimes in the "children's ward of the Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home”, and Agnes Erna Petersen (biography see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de), victim 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, 332-5 Standesämter, Sterbefallsammelakten, 64155 u. 670/1941 Marianne Harms; StaH, 332-5 Standesämter, Sterberegister, 9926 u. 670/1941 Marianne Harms; StaH, 352-5 Standesämter, Todesbescheinigungen, 1941 Sta 1b Nr. 670 Marianne Harms; StaH, 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn, Abl. 2000/01 Nr. 28 Akte 29086; Standesamt Bardowiek, Geburtsregister, Nr. 31/1940 Marianne Harms; Hildegard Thevs: Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Rothenburgsort. Biographische Spurensuche, Hamburg 2011, S. 204 (Agnes Petersen).