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Otto Jaeger * 1907

Gilbertstraße 62 Ecke Winklerspark (Altona, Altona-Altstadt)

HIER WOHNTE
OTTO JAEGER
JG. 1907
INHAFTIERT 1938-1941
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
1941 NEUENGAMME
ERMORDET 3.5.1945

Otto Heinrich Jaeger, born 25 Apr. 1907 in Altona, died presumably 3 May 1945 with the sinking of the "Cap Arcona”

Gilbertstraße 62 (Gustavstraße 62)

Otto Jaeger belongs to the persecuted whose biographies were classified as criminal justice records and prisoner records of homosexuals, and therefore not worthy of archiving, at the end of the 1980s into the early 1990s. As such their biographies were destroyed a second time. Only a few biographical details could be reconstructed based on documents from the civil registry office and prisoner files.

Otto Jaeger was born in 1907 as the son of a Lutheran blue-collar worker Johannes Jaeger and his wife Emma, née Meyer, on the third floor of the house at Altona’s Sedanstraße 37. Nothing is known about his further path of life. He appears not to have received vocational training, for later his occupation is only noted as "laborer”.

At the age of 31, he is first noted in the surviving prison documents from 11 to 13 Nov. 1938 as a "prisoner held in protective custody” for the criminal investigation department at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. Afterwards he served a term for "perverted fornication/crime” until 5 Apr. 1939 at the remand prison on Holstenglacis. On 2 Apr. 1939 presumably Hamburg’s District Court sentenced him after § 175 to a two-year jail term which he served in Fuhlsbüttel directly following his time in remand prison, only one month of which was taken into account for his sentence.

On 22 Feb. 1941 after serving his full sentence, Otto Jaeger was not given his freedom, but instead was discharged to the "police authority” which again had him imprisoned at Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp following a stay at an unknown place from 24 to 27 Mar. 1941. From there he was transferred by the Gestapo to Neuengamme concentration camp, like many homosexual men, where he was held under the prisoner number 4523 and the prefix "homo”. At the camp he worked as a "cauldron cook”. In one of the few surviving camp documents, the laboratory examination books, his name is listed due to a urine exam carried out on 17 Sept. 1943. No evidence of disease was found. In summer/autumn 1944, he was still imprisoned in the camp since his name was recorded on a so-called Hollerith file card of the "SS Main Finance Administration Office, Department D. Concentration Camp”.

It is not unlikely that Otto Jaeger perished after the camp was cleared out, on the way to the Baltic or on the "Cap Arcona” ship that was bombarded on 3 May 1945.

Since his last residence of his own free choosing was at Gustavstraße 62 in Altona, today Gilberstraße 62, at the corner of Winklers Park, a Stumbling Stone has been laid there to commemorate his fate.


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

Stand: April 2018
© Bernhard Rosenkranz (†) / Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: AB Altona 1908; StaH 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung, Ablieferung 2, 451 a E 1, 1 c; StaH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferung 13 und 17789; StaH 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II, Ablieferung 15 Band 1; StaH 332-8 Meldewesen, A 34/1 (= 741-4 Fotoarchiv, K 4459); Auskunft des Standesamts Hamburg-Altona zur Geburtseintragung 1907; Mit Dank an Alyn Beßmann, KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, für eine Auskunft vom 27.8.2014 mit Hinweis auf das Laboruntersuchungsbuch III des Krankenreviers, lab 001100496, und auf eine Hollerith-Vorkarteikarte des SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungs-Hauptamtes Amtsgruppe D. Konzentrationslager vom Sommer bis Herbst 1944, Bundesarchiv Berlin NS 3/1577, file 055751; Bästlein, Zehntausend Akten, S. 125–142 und Micheler: "Verfahren nach § 175", S. 112–121.