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Anne Kahl
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Anne Kahl * 1922

Goebenstraße 10 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
ANNE KAHL
JG. 1922
EINGEWIESEN 1925
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 16.8.1943
AM STEINHOF WIEN
TOT 8.9.1945
URSACHE: FORTGESETZTE
MANGELERNÄHRUNG

Anne (Änne) Maria Erna Kahl, born on 16.11.1922 in Hamburg, on 24.6.1925 admitted to the Alsterdorf Institutions (today Protestant Foundation Alsterdorf), on 16.8.1943 "transferred" to "Wagner von Jauregg – Curative and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna” ("Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien”) in Vienna, died there on 8.9.1945

Goebenstraße 10

Anne (Änne) Maria Erna Kahl was born on 16 November 1922 at six and a half months old in Hamburg-Eppendorf Hospital. She remained there until 7 May 1923, as her mother did not take her in. The hospital therefore placed Anne Kahl in "public care". We do not know in which home Anna Kahl was admitted to.

The girl's name was recorded as "Anne" in almost all official documents, including her baptism certificate, although shortly before her baptism, her mother wrote to the Alsterdorf Institutions and requested "that my daughter not be baptized 'Anne' but 'Aenne Maria Erna', as stated on the birth certificate." The patient file in the archives of the Alsterdorf Protestant Foundation contains a birth certificate on which the call name can be read as both Änne and Anne due to the barely visible umlaut dots. The birth register from 1922 is not yet publicly accessible, so that the correct spelling of the name must remain open. The girl is called "Anne" here, as on the Stolperstein in her memory.

Anne Kahl's mother, Anna Maria Dorothea Kahl, born in Hamburg on 3 October 1903, had a difficult childhood and youth. There was no contact between her and her mother Caroline Dorothea Johanna Kahl, who had been married to the painter's assistant Paul Johannes Gottlieb Franz Senst since 1907 and had two children with him. Anna Maria Dorothea Kahl was raised by her grandparents. According to her own account, she spent two years from the age of 16 in "compulsory education" at the Hamburg orphanage.

According to Anna Maria Dorothea Kahl, she was not in a position to take her baby into her care because she did not have the space and could not find a foster home. When the child was born, the unmarried woman was 19 years old and had just completed an apprenticeship. The apprenticeship profession is not known.
She had been unemployed since 8 February 1925 and lived on unemployment benefits. When her daughter Anne was admitted to the former Alsterdorf Institutions (now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf), she worked as a rubber coat gluer. The child's biological father, a dock worker, is said to have been "devoted to drink".

When Anne Kahl was admitted to the Alsterdorf Institutions, her mother was living as a subtenant at Goebenstraße 10. She is said to have married the sailor Hans Carl Ernst Jungclaus, born on 4 October 1898 in Altona, in August 1926. There is no corresponding marriage entry in the Hamburg and Altona civil registers, so the marriage may have taken place outside Hamburg. The marriage did not change Anne Kahl's situation.

To justify Anne Kahl's admission to the Alsterdorf Institutions, a medical report from the Eppendorf Hospital dated 18 May 1925, stated that the girl was a child with complete physical and mental retardation. Despite much effort on the part of the nurses, she had not learned to stand or walk, could hardly sit even with support, did not speak, either "lay there dully" or screamed for hours on end for no apparent reason.

According to the entries in her medical records, Anne Kahl was "without speech, completely helpless, in need of permanent institutional care" in the Alsterdorf Institutions. In January 1926, she was reportedly able to stand but still unable to speak. The institutions reported to the youth welfare office that Anne Kahl was making progress, was willing and ready to work, was learning to wash and comb her own hair and was doing small jobs with enthusiasm. Uncontrollable convulsions described as "St. Vitus' dance" were improving; only when suddenly called did her limbs "fly" (she trembled). She is also learning to walk up the stairs without help. Her speech is sluggish, sometimes barely understandable. She is learning to read Latin print and to count from 1-10.

As far as can be seen from Anne Kahl's medical records, she never received any visitors. Only once, in August 1929, does her mother seem to have expressed a wish to visit her, but this was turned down because Anna was ill with scarlet fever.

From 1930 onwards, it was repeatedly reported that Anne liked to kiss and hug other children. She was now perceived as more lively, spoke a lot, but still unintelligibly and quietly, liked to sing and hum to herself.

The reports about Anne varied and sometimes contradicted each other. On the one hand, it was said that she was a lively, cheerful child who spoke, sang and could hardly sit still. She was clean and able to dress and undress herself. On the other hand, there are later reports that Anne is still unable to dress herself alone, dresses everything upside down, eats very slowly on her own and has to be repeatedly reminded to do so, sits and dreams all the time, plays with her fingers in the air and makes all kinds of strange movements when walking. She took little part in the patients' games. She pulled out her hair ribbons, knotted her hair and pulled out whole tufts of hair.
In March 1937, the staff noted: "Patient has become more lively recently, repeats everything, even whole sentences", but in June 1937: "Patient has not spoken for a few days, she opens her mouth but no sound comes out." According to the patient file, the developmental progress and regression described continued in a similar way over the next few years.

Anne Kahl's stay in the Alsterdorf Institutions ended on 16 August 1943, when the institution’s doctor, SA member Gerhard Kreyenberg, wrote in Anne Kahl's file: "Transferred to Vienna due to severe damage to the institutions caused by bombing."

During the heavy air raids on Hamburg at the end of July/beginning of August 1943 ("Operation Gomorrha"), the Alsterdorf Asylum also suffered bomb damage. The head of the Asylum, SA member Pastor Friedrich Lensch, took the opportunity, with the approval of the health authorities, to get rid of some of the residents who were considered "hard to work, in need of care or particularly difficult" by transporting them to other sanatoriums and nursing homes. On 16 August 1943, one of these transports "transferred" 228 women and girls from Alsterdorf and 72 girls and women from the "Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home” to the "Wagner von Jauregg sanatorium and nursing home of the city of Vienna" (also known as the "Am Steinhof" institution). Anne Kahl was among them.

Anne Kahl weighed 43 kg when she arrived at the institution in Vienna. According to the records in the patient file there, she was "quiet on admission. Cannot speak clearly, stammering, in need of care, clean, accessible." These entries were repeated in 1944. When she was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in May 1945 according to the patient file, she was transferred to Pavilion 19, which served as an "infection pavilion" and thus also as a place of induced death. Anne Kahl is said to have spent most of her time there in the day room until she was "laid down due to diarrhea" in July 1945. She was "constantly lying in bed, [was] severely emaciated and weakened, although the patient ate a relatively large amount of food". Her weight had dropped to 31 kg in July 1945. At the beginning of September 1945, "slow deterioration" was noted.
Anne Kahl died on 8 September 1945. The documented cause of death was: "Congenital imbecility (idiocy), marasmus, inanition, suspected pulmonary tuberculosis". Marasmus is a serious illness that results from chronic malnutrition and leads to death. Inanition refers to a state of starvation caused by complete exhaustion of the organism due to a lack of or inadequate or faulty nutrition.

During the first phase of Nazi "euthanasia" from October 1939 to August 1941, the institution in Vienna was an intermediate institution for the Hartheim killing center near Linz. After the official end of the murders in the killing centers, mass murders continued in the previous intermediate institutions, including the Vienna Institution itself: through overdoses of medication and non-treatment of illness, but above all through food deprivation.
By the end of 1945, 257 of the 300 girls and women from Hamburg had lost their lives, 196 of them from Alsterdorf.

The stumbling stone in memory of Anne Kahl was laid in front of her mother's home address, although Anne never lived there; she spent her short life exclusively in homes and ‘tions.

Stand: August 2025
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: StaH 332-5 Standesämter 14010 Geburtsregister Nr. 2561/1903 (Anna Maria Dorothea Kahl), 8652 Heiratsregister Nr. 103/1907 (Caroline Dorothea Johanna Kahl/Paul Johannes Gottlieb Franz Senst); Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf Archiv Sonderakte V 186 (Anne Maria Erna Kahl). 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. 283 ff., 331 ff.