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Bertha Kaufmann * 1878

Oberstraße 16-18 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
BERTHA KAUFMANN
JG. 1878
EINGEWIESEN 1940
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
BRANDENBURG
ERMORDET 23.9.1940
"AKTION T4"

Bertha Kaufmann, born on 20. 9. 1878 in Stuttgart, murdered on 23. 9. 1940 in the Brandenburg at river Havel killingcentre

Oberstraße 18 (formerly Klosterallee 14) Hamburg-Harvestehude

Bertha Kaufmann was born on Sept., 20, 1878 in Stuttgart as the sixth and youngest child of a Jewish merchant family living there. Her father, Wilhelm Kaufmann, died of typhoid fever in 1895. Bertha Kaufmann's mother Henriette showed strongly changing moods, sometimes tender, sometimes irritable and violent. She threatened to commit suicide. She was violent towards her servants. In 1907 she was admitted to the "Flamm'sche Privat-Heilanstalt" in Pfullingen Castle on the outskirts of Reutlingen because she had delusions. At the end of July 1908, her condition had improved so that she could be released. Shortly afterwards, she was readmitted at her own request and remained in the institution until her death on March 17, 1913.

Bertha Kaufmann developed into a "problem child" at an early age. She was said to have been little active or lazy at school and to have spoken negatively about teachers. Later she described herself as a bad pupil caused by her brothers, who had spoiled her too much. She had to leave a secondary school at the age of twelve. She then attended another school for three years and finally an embroidery school for 18 months. She received private music lessons and painting lessons from a "very pious pastor's daughter", according to Bertha's account.

According to her brother Karl, Bertha Kaufmann could never stay in one place for long. She got into conflicts with her surroundings everywhere, did not know how to handle money and was unable to earn a living. She always considered herself an important person, a very talented singer and painter. She read treatises that were difficult to understand, sought out connections with "Christian ladies". She dressed so conspicuously that the children ran after her in mockery.

On May 15, 1906, now 27 years old Bertha Kaufmann, was admitted for the first time to an "insane asylum", namely the Psychiatric University Hospital Tübingen. When she was admitted, her companion whom Bertha called a "missionary", reported that Bertha had always been an enthusiast, that her head was filled with art and literature. She was preoccupied with thoughts of marriage, prepared her trousseau, but cut up the most beautiful clothes in a senseless way. She was irritable, did not tolerate contradiction and had even become violent towards her mother. When Bertha became pregnant during an affair with a painter, she had fits of rage and smashed everything. Bertha herself, however, still claimed years later that she did not know how she had become pregnant. When the pregnancy was noticed, the family sent her to Berlin. There the child was born, but died of "weakness of life" after a few days.

Bertha Kaufmann felt observed and persecuted on public streets. She felt that everyone could see her past. Presumably this referred to her illegitimate pregnancy. In Tübingen, her mood and behavior changed. Sometimes she was quiet and subdued, then she scolded the nurses with foul language and insinuated that the food was poisoned. At her mother's request, Bertha Kaufmann was released "unhealed" on July 13, 1906.

After stays in the Rottenmünster sanatorium near Rottweil, in the Pfullingen sanatorium and nursing home and in the "Sick and Lunatic ward" of the Bürgerhospital in Stuttgart, Bertha Kaufmann lived in freedom from May 1914 to July 1920. She changed her place of residence very often, until she finally came to Hamburg. Her brother Karl lived here, from whom she hoped for support.

During the time before her first admission to the Friedrichsberg state hospital on July, 8, 1920, she lived in the Christian Social Women's Seminar of the Verein für Christliche Privat-Seminare e.V. at Wartenau 7a. Here, too, the director perceived her as fluctuating in her moods. When she arrived, she was agitated and completely restless. She preferred to sit in a room alone. She gave up a job in an embroidery shop after a few days, because the company did not suit her. In the house of the women's seminary, Bertha Kaufmann always felt set back, misunderstood and disadvantaged. The staff there found her very difficult.

Based on a certificate from the director of the Friedrichsberg state hospital, Professor Wilhelm Weygandt, Bertha Kaufmann was admitted there on July 8, 1920. According to the patient's file, she provided accurate information about her family circumstances at the time of admission, but gave a highly exaggerated account of her own career. Her first admission to an "insane asylum" was at her own instigation. She had deliberately behaved "meaner and meaner" in order to avoid a planned marriage to an uneducated man. She had loved one man very much, but did not want to talk about it. She had always run to the asylums when something didn't suit her. After the death of her mother (March 1913), she travelled a lot and wanted to go to a Catholic convent. Finally, she ended up in Hamburg, having left behind "an awful lot of debts" (1000 RM) in Stuttgart. She took it for granted that her brothers would take care of her.

When Bertha Kaufmann escaped from the Friedrichsberg state hospital on Oct., 16, 1920, she was brought back after a few hours by her brother Karl Kaufmann. Finally, on April, 18, 1921, Bertha Kaufmann was released from Friedrichsberg "improved" with the consent of her guardian, Pastor Herdmüller. Her address was now Siechenheim Elim in Hamburg-Eppendorf. On Dec., 10, 1921, she was admitted to Friedrichsberg for the second time. The reports on her state of illness read like those during the first stay. Four and a half years later, on July, 13, 1926, she was again allowed to leave Friedrichsberg, with the assessment "improved".

Bertha Kaufmann now lived in various boarding houses and in private accommodations. After a stopover in an asylum in Schleswig-Holstein, she was said to have been forcibly transferred "wrapped in cloths" to the Kropp asylum near Schleswig with 80 other patients. A rabbi (Dr Benjamin Cohen, district rabbi of Friedrichstadt from 1928 to 1938) saved her from the asylum. She was then allowed to live with him. After an argument in which she told the rabbi, "Now I've had enough of your piety, adieu!", she returned to Hamburg. She lived with her brother for a short time, then in a Jewish girls' boarding school. Here she wanted to buy a piano so that she could perform magnificently with singing. However, because she did not have the sheets of music, the performance did not take place, but a heated argument ensued. As a result of which the guardian who had been called, arranged for her to be forcibly admitted to the Eppendorf hospital.

Since June, 22, 1930, Bertha Kaufmann was in the Friedrichsberg state hospital again. In the two following years until her release on March, 11, 1932, her behaviour was described as already during her earlier stays. Afterwards, Bertha Kaufmann lived in the boarding house of the widow Regina Bachrach at Klosterallee 14 for the last time outside of institutions. On Aug., 30, 1933, she was again admitted to Friedrichsberg and from there she was transferred to the state hospital Hamburg-Langenhorn on July, 13, 1934 with the diagnosis "schizophrenia".

The note in her medical file from October 1934 may give an impression of Bertha Kaufmann's behavior and her clinical picture in Langenhorn: "Still has a lot of friction with fellow patients, about whose coarse language or 'Anti-Semitism' she laments and makes pathetic complaints. Constantly scolds the doctors and nurses in the ward, everything is not good enough for her. She constantly demands wardrobe items that are no longer available. She tries to persuade the nurses to buy fine dresses, patent leather shoes etc. for her. My brother will pay for everything'. Scold the Christians profusely."

Nearly one year later, on April, 3, 1935, Bertha Kaufmann was brought to the Strecknitz Sanatorium in Lübeck, where, due to the overcrowded Hamburg facilities, Hamburg patients were repeatedly accommodated.

The reports on Bertha Kaufmann's behavior are similar to previous ones, but are now written with a clearly discriminatory tendency: "She still overwhelms the doctor with her simultaneously confused and stereotypical torrent of words, is constantly querulous, nagging, complaining and complaining, often reminds one of the well-known condition of 'Jewish querulous psychosis'. Uninfluenceable and unteachable, completely lacking in insight. Stereotypically haughty and condescending in her nature. Writes confused letters full of urgent requests."

After a long period of relative calm, Bertha Kaufmann moved to a private foster home in Lübeck on June, 5, 1936. Only eleven days later, this attempt had to be abandoned again. When she was readmitted to Strecknitz, she again grumbled about her placement, talked unstoppably and, according to the file note, showed a lively and "quite constant affect (expansive, irritable-sensitive with a querulous coloring) 'Jewish querulous psychosis'". Another attempt to place Bertha Kaufmann in family care was not made, despite a suggestion by her new guardian, Dr. N. M. Nathan, syndic of the German-Israelite community in Hamburg. She remained in the Lübeck-Strecknitz sanatorium.

In the spring/summer of 1940, the "Euthanasia" headquarters in Berlin, Tiergartenstraße 4, planned a special action against Jews in public and private sanatoriums and nursing homes. They had the Jewish people living in the institutions registered and gathered together in so-called collective institutions. The Hamburg-Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home was designated as the North German collective institution. All institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg were ordered to transfer the Jews living in their institutions to Langenhorn by Sept., 18, 1940.

Bertha Kaufmann arrived in Langenhorn on Sept, 16, 1940. On Sept., 23, 1940, she was transported to Brandenburg an der Havel with another 135 patients from asylums in northern Germany. The transport reached the Märkish city on the same day. In the part of the former penitentiary that had been converted into a gas killing facility, the people were immediately herded into the gas chamber and murdered with carbon monoxide. Only Ilse Herta Zachmann initially escaped this fate (see www.stolperstein-hamburg.de).

It is not known whether and, if so, when relatives were informed of Bertha Kaufmann's death. In all documented notifications it was claimed that the person concerned had died in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German). However, those murdered in Brandenburg had never been in Chelm/Cholm, a town east of Lublin. The Polish sanatorium that used to exist there, no longer existed after SS units had murdered almost all the patients on 12 Jan. 1940. There was also no German registry office in Chelm. The invention of the registry office and the use of later than actual death dates served to disguise the murder and at the same time to be able to claim food costs for a longer period of time.

Bertha Kaufmann's brother Karl, born on March, 17, 1872 in Stuttgart, was married to Amalie Bodenheimer, born on May 3, 1873. The couple lived at Woldsenweg 14 in Hamburg-Eppendorf, later at Vogelreth 9a in the Steinwerder district. Karl and Amalie Kaufmann left Hamburg in 1933 and moved to Prague. Their further fate is not known. Another brother is said to have committed suicide as a result of financial problems. The fate of the other two brothers is unknown. Bertha's only sister was married in America.

Translator Elisabeth Wendland

Stand: July 2022
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4; 5; AB; StaH 133-1 III Staatsarchiv III, 3171-2/4 U.A. 4, Liste psychisch kranker jüdischer Patientinnen und Patienten der psychiatrischen Anstalt Langenhorn, die aufgrund nationalsozialistischer "Euthanasie"-Maßnahmen ermordet wurden, zusammengestellt von Peter von Rönn, Hamburg (Projektgruppe zur Erforschung des Schicksals psychisch Kranker in Langenhorn); 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26. 8. 1939 bis 27. 1. 1941; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Bertha Kaufmann der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patientenakte Bertha Kaufmann der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; IMGWF Lübeck, Archiv, Patientenakte Bertha Kaufmann der Heilanstalt Lübeck-Strecknitz; Stadtarchiv Stuttgart, Geburtenbuch Stuttgart-Mitte Geburtsregister Nr. 3277/1878 Bertha Kaufmann; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig.
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