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Willy Schäfer * 1905

Grindelallee 9 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
WILLY SCHÄFER
JG. 1905
MEHRMALS VERHAFTET
1941 KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
NEUENGAMME
TOT 3.5.1945

Willy Heinrich Schäfer, born on 19 Dec. 1905 in Traar near Krefeld, died presumably on 3 May 1945 during the sinking of the "Cap Arcona.”

Grindelallee 9

Willy Schäfer was born in 1905 in the Traar District of Krefeld, which was incorporated in 1929, as the son of the stoker Johann Schäfer and Elisabeth Schäfer, née Heinen. He had a younger and an older sister. Until he was 14 years old, he attended the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule), but was often absent due to numerous illnesses. Afterward, he was to learn the blacksmith’s trade, but gave up this job requiring an apprenticeship after nine months because he was supposedly too small and weak.

When he then embezzled wage money when employed as an errand boy, he was sentenced in 1921 to three months in prison on probation and sent for four years to a house of corrections in Dormagen near Düsseldorf, where he found employment in a nursery. He was again unable to complete a corresponding apprenticeship for health reasons.

After he ran away from a job to which he had been placed with a farmer in 1925 and returned to his parents unemployed, he broke off contact with them for many years, which prompted Willy Schäfer in 1941 to state, "The parents do not take care of me; my father cannot stand me and has disowned me.” At that time, he first worked as a male nurse in a monastery near Cologne, where he fell ill himself and underwent an operation on his stomach. Later he took to the road, going to, among other things, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and Frankfurt/Main. During this time, he was sentenced to minor prison sentences for vagrancy and begging; for the first time also, during a visit to his old home, for his homosexual predisposition: In 1935, he was sentenced to two months in Cologne for "causing a public nuisance” ("Erregung öffentlichen Ärgernisses”) (Sec. 183) after exposing himself under the influence of alcohol. A second sentence pursuant to this section of the criminal code in Frankfurt/Main was already more substantial, six months, after which he was dependent on welfare benefits in that city.

At his time placed in jobs as a gardener and farm hand in the Kassel and Hannover area, he went to Hamburg with his lover Erich Kleewin at the end of 1938. The two lived in the Winzer boarding house at Peterstrasse 33, but they were exposed there.

Therefore, following a police arrest, Willy Schäfer was placed in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp from 9 to 12 Dec. 1938, before being transferred to "regular” pretrial detention. Simultaneously with the sentencing to a two-month prison term at the end of Feb. 1939 for "unnatural sexual offenses” ("widernatürliche Unzucht”) according to Sec.175, he was released because the imprisonment periods accrued up to then were calculated against his overall sentence. He then found employment near his boyfriend’s place of work in Neuengamme. However, his freedom did not last for long, as he was arrested again for his homosexuality at the end of June and sentenced to a nine-month prison term in mid-Sept. 1939, which he served until 30 Mar. 1940 in the building of the Holstenglacis pretrial detention facility. He was then transferred to the police authority, but was released again.

The employment office arranged for him to do poorly paid gardening work in Winterhude; he changed to the Tretorn, Gummi- und Asbestwerke AG company, a rubber and asbestos plant in Barmbek, where he received a higher weekly wage of 35 RM (reichsmark). During this time, he continued to take men whom he also met at his place of work with him to his rooms, which he rented as a subtenant first in Hamburg-Neustadt at Kuhberg 5 and finally in Rotherbaum at Grindelallee 9 on the second floor.

Willy Schäfer’s undoing was a 1940 meeting on Reeperbahn with the male prostitute Paul Kühnapfel (born in 1915), whose statements dragged many homosexuals into the abyss after he had identified them with the help of photo collections on file at the criminal investigation department. That is how events unfolded in this case, too: In May 1941, he turned in Willy Schäfer, with whom he had spent a night in return for food and lodging at the time, by testifying to police. (In addition, Paul Kühnapfel demanded sums of money several times during later meetings with Willy Schäfer).

After Willy Schäfer complied with a summons from the 24th Office of the Criminal Investigation Department (24. Kriminalkommissariat) responsible for "homosexual offenses” on 14 May 1941, he was again taken into "protective custody” in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp until 24 May after being interrogated for the first time. He then made extensive confessions about his homosexual experiences, but tried not to mention any names if possible, or later stated that he had made mistakes with persons already mentioned and that he knew them from non-sexual contexts. He was taken into custody and in Sept. 1941, he was sentenced by the Hamburg District Court (Amtsgericht) to a two-year prison term in accordance with Sec. 175 [of the Reich Criminal Code] after expert opinions had been issued by the "Investigative Assistance for Criminal Justice” ("Ermittlungshilfe für Strafrechtspflege”) and by Court Medical Officer (Gerichts-Medizinalrat) Schwarke – despite an unfavorable prognosis, the latter initially recommended only a severe prison sentence and neither a "voluntary castration” nor "protective measures.”

He served his sentence in the Wolfenbüttel prison from Oct. 1941 until 15 May 1943. At the end of the detention, the "Staatliche Kriminalpolizei, Kriminalpolizeileitstelle Hamburg” (Hamburg headquarters of the state criminal investigation department) was to decide whether "preventive measures” ("vorbeugende Massnahmen”) ought to be taken after the release of Willy Schäfer. In Wolfenbüttel, it was believed that his homosexuality was "quite obviously ... deeply rooted in him.” Although he conducted himself impeccably during the execution of his sentence, was "willing and courteous” and showed good work performance, the criminal investigation department in Hamburg ordered "preventive police detention” ("polizeiliche Vorbeugungshaft”), which could be described as arbitrary parallel justice. For this reason, instead of to freedom, Willy Schäfer was released into the infamous inner-city Hütten police prison in the street by the same name (house no. 40), which in many comparable cases served as a stopover on the way to a concentration camp. This was also the case with Willy Schäfer, who was imprisoned in the Neuengamme concentration camp from 3 July 1943, designated with the prisoner number 22,315. There he survived the difficult prison conditions until at least the fall of 1944, as his documentation by name in the central prisoner file of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt) proves.

After the war, objects (effects) belonging to him from the Neuengamme concentration camp were found. It is not unlikely that he belonged to the prisoners who were driven onto the ships "Cap Arcona” and "Thielbeck,” respectively, and were killed in the Bay of Neustadt during the bombardment by British airplanes on 3 May 1945. Willy Schäfer would have been 39 years old at the time.

Paul Kühnapfel, the male prostitute who had turned him in to the police, was later imprisoned himself despite his comprehensive and "successful” testimony to the police. After terms in the Emsland camps and the Neuengamme concentration camp, he was last sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where, in contrast to Willy Schäfer, he survived the Nazi terror and was liberated in 1945.

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

© Bernhard Rosenkranz (†)/Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung, Ablieferung 2, 451 a E 1, 1 c; 213-11, Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 3481/43; 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, 25291 (= 741-4 Fotoarchiv, A 261) und Ablieferung 1998/1;331-1 II Polizeibehörde II, Ablieferung 15 Band 1; Dank an Dr. Reimer Möller, KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, für Auskünfte aus den dort geführte Datenbanken und den Hinweis auf das Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS 3/1755, Hollerith-Vorkarteikarte des SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungs-Hauptamtes Amtsgruppe D, sowie an Rainer Hoffschildt, Hannover, für ergänzende biographische Hinweise, u. a. aus einer Gefangenen-Personalakte des Niedersächsischen Landesarchivs, Standort Wolfenbüttel, 43 A Neu 4 Jg. 1941 Nr. 554; Rosenkranz/Bollmann/Lorenz: Homosexuellen-Verfolgung, S. 252–253.