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Alfons Höpfner * 1897

Bartelsstraße 10 (Altona, Sternschanze)

HIER WOHNTE
ALFONS HÖPFNER
JG. 1897
VERHAFTET 1941
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
TOT AN HAFTFOLGEN
1.4.1942

Alfons Kurt Paul Höpfner, born 14 June 1897 in Braunschweig, died 1 Apr. 1942 in Hamburg

Bartelsstraße 10 (Bartelsstraße 8)

The office clerk Alfons Höpfner was born in Braunschweig in 1897 as the son of Richard Höpfner and his wife Anna Berta, née Görsch, and was baptized Evangelical Lutheran. He was one of the Nazis’ victims whose biography can barely be reconstructed due to the destruction of penal records carried out in the 1990s. The victims were eliminated a second time, so to speak. Only two prisoner registry cards and the chronological billing of the costs of "protective custody” by the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp give some meager insight into his persecution as a homosexual. He appears to have maintained his relationship with his parents after he moved to Hamburg, for his father is named as his next of kin to contact when he is taken into custody on 19 Dec. 1941 at the Hamburg City Remand Prison at Holstenglacis 3. By that time, his mother had already passed away. A few days prior on 13 Dec. 1941, Alfons Höpfner had been arrested by the 24th Criminal Investigations Department responsible for homosexual "offences” in Hamburg and detained at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp as a "protected prisoner”. The interrogations conducted first under tough prison conditions and then during remand detention and the investigative work apparently led to a quick confession. Consequently Alfons Höpfner was sentenced to a prison term of four months by the Hamburg District Court for a "crime” after § 175 on 17 Feb. 1942. His time spent in remand prison was taken into account for sentencing which meant that the end of his sentence on 10 April 1942 was already in sight once he was transferred to the Hamburg-Harburg Penitentiary on 10 Mar. 1942. It can no longer be determined whether it was there that he contracted pneumonia or already while he was in "protective” or remand custody. In any event, that illness, which spread across both lungs and to his pleura, led to his early release on 31 Mar. 1942 to the Harburg Municipal Hospital where he died one day later on 1 Apr. 1942 at the age of 44 from cardiovascular failure. Alfons Höpfner’s last residence as a tenant was a room on the first floor of the house at Bartelsstraße 8 (today house number 10). It is at this address where a Stumbling Stone commemorates his persecution.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2018
© Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH, 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, 10189 a und Ablieferung 13; 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II, Ablieferung 15, Band 1; StaH 332-5 Standesämter, 11855 (Eintrag Nr. 436).