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Gerd Hamkens * 1910

Beim Schlump 24 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
GERD HAMKENS
JG. 1910
VERHAFTET 1938
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
SACHSENHAUSEN
ERMORDET 24.8.1941

Gerd Karl Emil Hamkens, born 13 May 1910 in Hamburg, died 24 Aug. 1941 in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

Beim Schlump 24 (Beim Schlump 25)

Gerd Hamkens’ parents were the shop-owner Peter Hamkens and his wife Alice, née Drewes. His brother Otto was two years his senior. The Hamkens family was originally from Eiderstedt in Schleswig-Holstein.

Little is known about Gerd Hemkens, other than that he was 1.76m (5’9”) tall and that he wore glasses. His profession was given as an office worker and a sales representative, and he lived at various addresses in Hamburg. On 17 February 1932 he married Gertrud Sänger, but they divorced on 15 July 1934.

According to his files with the B3 unit of the Berlin State Police, Gerd Hamkens was arrested on 8 December 1937 "during a routine check among known homosexuals.” He admitted to having met Walter Neumann (*1909), who was also arrested, and a man named Jentsch, who escaped arrest, in the establishment called Weltkrug on the former Lothringer Straße in Berlin-Mitte, and to having had sex first with Jentsch and later with Neumann in Naumann’s apartment. Since they met, he had also lived in Neumann’s apartment. When he was arrested it was discovered that he was wanted in Hamburg on charges of theft.

Gerd Hamkens had a previous record for fraud, theft, and falsification of documents from 1931 to 1936, and had just been released from the Wolfenbüttel prison in May 1937. He travelled to Berlin after stealing silverware and pieces of clothing from his landlady on Schlegelsweg in Eilbeck in late September 1937. He had told his landlady that he was a student from Kiel in order to hide the fact that he was unemployed.

After his time in Gestapo prison and pre-trial detention, Gerd Hamkens was sent to the Lehrterstraße prison on 14 December 1937. On 25 January 1938 the Regional Court in Berlin found him guilty on two counts of homosexuality and sentenced him to one year in prison, and in March 1938 the Berlin District Court found him guilty on one count of theft and sentenced him to one year in prison and the loss of his rights as a citizen for two years. He was transferred to the Spandau prison in March 1938, and from there to the Brandenburg/Havel penitentiary in Görden on 12 April 1938. In August 1938 the Berlin Regional Court pronounced a combined prison sentence, which included the decision of the Hamburg Regional Court on the incident in Hamburg, of two years and three months. Before this pronouncement he had been transferred to the Celle penitentiary on 29 July 1938. Shortly before he was to be released, on 21 April 1940, he was given an unfavorable evaluation. He was considered to be a recidivistic "habitual criminal” and "protective custody” was ordered. He was sent to the Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp, via the Hütten jail in Hamburg, on 28 May 1940, where he remained on the subsistence costs lists until 25 June 1940.

From there he was transferred directly to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp on 29 June 1940. There Gerd Hamkens was given the prisoner number 26177 and grouped in the prisoner category "B.V.” (Berufsverbrecher = career criminal). He was in the prison infirmary from 13 March 1941 until his death on 24 August 1941, allegedly of heart failure after "exudative tuberculosis.” According to the entry in the register of deaths at the Oranienburg registry office, his last address in Hamburg was Beim Schlump 25 (present-day 24), where he lived with his mother. For this reason the Stolperstein in his memory was placed there. Gerd Hamkens’ true fate was never spoken of in the family. It was said that he and his mother were killed during air raids over Berlin. In truth, his fate was sealed in 1937 during the Gestapo investigation in Berlin, and his mother died in late July 1943 in Borgfelde during the bombing of Hamburg.

Translator: Amy Lee

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 9820/38; 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferungen 13 u. 16; 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung, Abl. 2, 451 a E 1, 1 e; 331-5 Polizeibehörde – Unnatürliche Sterbefälle, 8 H 1933; Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Hauptstaatsarchiv Hannover, Hann. 86 Celle Acc. 142/90 Nr. 38/0216; Auskünfte von Rainer Hoffschildt, Hannover, vom Januar 2009, Monika Liebscher, Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen vom 3.10.2011, Haye Hamkens, Tetenbüll, Vorsitzender des Familienverbandes Hamkens, vom Januar/Februar 2012 sowie von Andreas Pretzel, Berlin; Rosenkranz/Bollmann/Lorenz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung, S. 268.