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Marie Przywarra * 1898

Großer Schippsee 15 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
MARIE PRZYWARRA
JG. 1898
EINGEWIESEN 1911
ROTENBURGER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 1941
HEILANSTALT WEILMÜNSTER
ERMORDET 24.8.1944

Marie Przywarra, b. 9.23.1898 in Harburg, committed to the Rotenburg Institutes of the Inner Mission, transferred several more times, murdered in the "Hadamar State Mental Hospital" 8.24.1944

Stadtteil Harburg-Altstadt, Großer Schippsee 15

Marie Przywarra was born in Harburg, the illegitimate child of the worker Charlotte Przywarra. Her mother lived in the center of this Prussian city on the south bank of the Elbe. She changed her address frequently. In this way Marie Przywarra got to know not only Harburg but the surrounding rural area of the city. In her early years, the little girl apparently developed much like other children. She was in good physical condition; there were no problems in school, although since 1909 she grew up in a foster home in Adolphsheide-Fallingbostel. In the eyes of her fellows, she was a "lively, cheerful, good natured girl.”

The tragic turn in her life came with epileptic seizures, which occurred first at Pentecost 1911. They were so violent and frequent that the girl was excluded from school and had to be sent to the district hospital in Walsrode. Because the subsequent four weeks of therapy did not have the desired success, on 21 August 1911, the director of the hospital advocated admission to an institution. Just three weeks later Marie Przywarra became a patient in the "Asylum for Treatment of Epileptics in Rotenburg (Hanover).” Here the doctors diagnosed "epileptic thromboses and their equivalents.”

This facility for people with disabilities in the county seat on the River Wümme developed after 1900 into an important center of healthcare service for the poor and the ill in northern Germany. The ill were cared for by nursing sisters, who had previously worked in a Hamburg deaconess’s home founded by Elise Averdieck. In the beginning, they shared the work with deaconesses of the Stephan Foundation and later with the brothers of the Luther Foundation.

After four weeks, a care-giver of Marie Przywarra affirmed in the hospital records that she had had three seizures in that period of time. Entered for the same date was: "Shows a lively disposition, is always cheerful, often a bit cheeky, attends the Institute’s school with success.” She even helped the children who went for "occupational therapy.” In the ward also she filled up her free time. After the conclusion of her schooling she worked on the estate and in the mending room. Little changed in this picture during the first years of her stay.

Slight but important changes became apparent after her 21st birthday. The records indicated a slow physical and mental decline. Her work stamina lasted for only half a day. This development continued without pause, her condition worsening slowly but ceaselessly from year to year. The negative signals accumulated. In January 1939, Marie Przywarra had "almost every night one or more seizures, also often during the day.” In addition, it was reported, she seemed dull and sluggish.” She helped peel potatoes but was "otherwise incapable of useful work.” Moreover, she required a high degree of care; she was unclean and wet the bed. Furthermore, her caregivers stated that after the death of her biological mother, with whom she had once spent a long furlough, there were apparently no longer any family members who now and then inquired about her.

This report was extremely threatening for Marie Przywarra. The Berlin headquarters of the "T-4 Action,” already in the first weeks of the war, began planning and preparing for the massive killing of supposedly incurably ill men, women, and children under the heading of "Euthanasia.” To this end, six killing facilities in the German Reich were outfitted with gas chambers, in which those "winnowed out” were murdered shortly after they arrived.

Among the victims first in line were the sick, those considered as no longer capable of work, who were in need of a high degree of care, and who had scarcely any – or no – contact with immediate family. On 5 August 1941, Marie Przywarra and 69 other female patients of the Rotenburger facility were transferred to the transitional Weilmünster facility in Hesse, where the doomed spent the last days or weeks before their murder. A little later, when murder by gas was officially suspended, the Rotenburg patients were still in the Weilmünster state mental hospital. Nevertheless, that in no way signaled their salvation. The murder program continued in a different form.

Marie Przywarra spent the following three years in this institution before she was sent on to the nearby "Hadamar State Mental Hospital" in the Province of Hesse-Nassau. Behind the walls of this facility from January to September 1941, by means of carbon monoxide gas, a total of 10,072 people were "disinfected” – according to the euphemistic language of the murderers. After the cessation of murder by gas, the extermination facilities were dismantled, however, the killing went on in individual wards. There doctors and nurses decided over life and death. The superintending doctor Adolf Wahlmann, after a day visit and a brief glance at the patient’s chart, determined in each case, who was no longer permitted to go on living. The ward nurses and caregivers on duty then had to administer the prescribed medications to the victim.

The "Hadamar State Mental Hospital” had recorded an extremely high use of Luminal, Veronal, morphine-scopolamine, and chloral hydrate in these years. Primarily responsible for the killings was certainly Alfons Klein, the director of the facility. It was important to him that there would always be beds available for new patients. The meager prescribed rations with their consequences also contributed to the massive number of deaths. The report of a surviving female patient leaves no doubt about this: "The food consisted of two thin slices of bread in the morning, a thin soup with potato peels floating in it but without fat or starch in the afternoon, in the evening a watery soup again … That with nourishment such as this a swift wasting away had to ensue is surely obvious.”

At first the dead were buried in the city cemetery. From September 1942, the facility used a piece of land on the hill behind the outbuildings as a new cemetery. From then on the coffins no longer had to be transported through the city, but could rather be buried unobserved on the grounds of the facility. Mass graves for the murdered could be dug without a problem.

From 1942 to 1945, 4817 people were transported to Hadamar. Of these patients, no fewer than 4422 died during this period. On its own, this high number of victims renders the proposition that they died a natural death as more than doubtful. As a rule their death certificates were silent about the true causes of death. The anger of relatives was to be nipped in the bud in this way.

Among the many dead of these years is also to be counted Marie Przywarra. She died on 24 August 1944 – only a few days after her transfer to this Nazi "Euthanasia” facility. Listed as cause of death on her death certificate was "epilepsy, persistent seizures, and heart failure.”

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: February 2018
© Klaus Möller

Quellen: Gedenkbuch der Rotenburger Werke der Inneren Mission; Archiv der Rotenburger Werke der Inneren Mission, Akte Nr. 135, 196; Rotenburger Werke (Hrsg.), Zuflucht; Landeswohlfahrtsverband Hessen (Hrsg.), "Verlegt nach Hadamar", 3. Auflage; Schriftliche Mitteilung Christina Vanjas vom 30.5.2011; Sander, Landesheilanstalt.