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Marianne Gutmann * 1865

Alter Steinweg 5 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
MARIANNE GUTMANN
JG. 1865
EINGEWIESEN 1939
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 23.9.1940
BRANDENBURG
ERMORDET 23.9.1940
"AKTION T4"

Marianne Gutmann, born on 1 Oct. 1865 in Hamburg, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel "euthanasia” killing center

Alter Steinweg 5

Marianne Gutmann was the fourth youngest of eleven children of the Jewish couple Zadick Guttmann and his wife Elise, née Biesental.

Zadick Guttmann was born in Hamburg in 1826, Elise Biesental in Hagenow in Mecklenburg. They married on 23 July 1853 in Elise’s birthplace and settled in Hamburg. As one can gather from the 1851 Hamburg directory, Zadick Guttmann had been running a clothing store in Hamburg-Neustadt since at least 1850. Officially, his last name at that time was still "Zadick Guttmann,” but in the directory, among others, he also spelled his name "Zadig Gutmann.” He was officially granted the desired name "Gutmann” only by decree of the Hamburg Senate dated 26 Nov. 1869. Shortly thereafter, on 10 Dec. 1869, he became a citizen of Hamburg. Zadig Gutmann came from a Jewish family with many branches living in Hamburg-Neustadt, where many of the men worked as clothing dealers or tailors. The two activities were often combined in one store, as was the case with Zadig Gutmann at times.

The two oldest daughters, Bertha and Jenny, were born on 25 June 1854, and 8 Dec. 1855, on 1st Marienstrasse, a street in Hamburg-Neustadt that no longer exists. Hermann, born on 13 Jan. 1857; Otto, on 10 Sept. 1858 (died on 2 Oct. 1866); Ludwig, on 21 Aug. 1860; Rosa, on 1 Oct. 1861; and Ferdinand, on 14 June 1863, were all born at Alter Steinweg 16, also in Hamburg-Neustadt. In 1865, Zadig Gutmann moved the business address and his family’s residential address a few houses further on to Alter Steinweg 5, where Marianne Gutmann was born on 1 Oct. 1865, as were her younger brothers Hellmuth Levy, on 26 Apr. 1867, and Bernhard, on 24 Sept. 1869, as well as sister Johanna, on 26 Dec. 1870 (died on 6 May 1872).

We know nothing about Marianne Gutmann’s childhood, youth, training, or employment. When she was admitted in Feb. 1927 to the institution for persons with mental disabilities or mental illnesses, by then renamed the "Friedrichsberg State Hospital” ("Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg”), Marianne had already spent seven periods in what was previously called the "Friedrichsberg Lunatic Asylum.” She was 61 years old and unmarried. A little later, the Hamburg-Langenhorn State Hospital admitted Marianne Gutmann.

Soon after the Nazis came to power, intensive surveys began into how cost-cutting accommodations and further restrictions could be achieved for persons with mental disability or mental illness.

"The idea of not keeping the Friedrichsberg State Hospital with its beautiful parks at the disposal of the mentally ill, but rather to open it up to German national comrades [Volksgenossen] who would benefit both mentally and physically from a stay in these beautiful grounds, gave the Reich Governor reason at the end of April 1934 to ask the health and welfare authorities to consider a corresponding reorganization.” Thus, in Dec. 1935, Senator Ofterdinger, the Senator of Health, justified the so-called Friedrichsberg-Langenhorn Plan. After the Hamburg Senate had decided on 7 Oct. 1934 that
"1. The curable sick should be treated with the greatest possible use of medical care.
2. The terminally ill are to be taken into custody first and foremost. Medical care is to be reduced to an acceptable minimum,”
extensive patient transfers between Hamburg institutions and to those outside of Hamburg began.

Around 450 patients were transferred from Langenhorn to state welfare institutions or private or non-profit institutions in Schleswig-Holstein, including Eichenkamp, a private facility for the elderly, sick, and disabled in Thesdorf/Pinneberg, which was established in 1928/1929.

Marianne Gutmann was transferred there on 9 July 1935, together with other patients from Langenhorn, and on 15 July 1939, she was transferred back to Langenhorn.

In the spring/summer of 1940, the "euthanasia” headquarters in Berlin, located at Tiergartenstrasse 4, planned a special operation aimed against Jews in public and private sanatoriums and nursing homes. It had the Jewish persons living in the institutions registered and moved together in what were officially so-called collection institutions. The Hamburg-Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt” Hamburg-Langenhorn) was designated the North German collection institution. All institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg were ordered to move the Jews living in their facilities there by 18 Sept. 1940. After all Jewish patients from the North German institutions had arrived in Langenhorn, they were loaded onto a train at the Ochsenzoll freight station on 23 Sept. 1940 and transported to Brandenburg/Havel. On the same day, they were killed with carbon monoxide in the part of the former penitentiary converted into a gas-killing facility. Only one patient, Ilse Herta Zachmann, escaped this fate at first (see corresponding entry).

We do not know whether, and if so, when relatives became aware of Marianne Gutmann’s death. In all documented death notices, it was claimed that the person concerned had died in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German). Those murdered in Brandenburg, however, were never in Chelm/Cholm, a town east of Lublin. The former Polish sanatorium there no longer existed after SS units had murdered almost all patients on 12 Jan. 1940. Also, there was no German records office in Chelm. Its fabrication and the use of postdated dates of death served to disguise the killing operation and at the same time enabled the authorities to claim higher care expenses for periods extended accordingly.

Relatives of Marianne Gutmann also perished in the Holocaust. More detailed accounts of individual fates of Marianne Gutmann’s siblings and their descendants are contained in Walter Gutmann’s biography (see there).

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

Stand: December 2020
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 4, 5; 6; 9; 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); 332-5 Standesämter 7992 Nr. 412/1908 Sterberegister Zadig Gutmann; 332-7 Staatsangehörigkeitsaufsicht A I e 40 Bd. 5 Bürgerregister 1845-1875; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26. 8. 1939 bis 27. 1. 1941; 522-1 Jüdische Gemeinden 696 b Geburtsregister Nr. 28/1826 Zadig Gutmann, 696 g Geburtsregister Nr. 42/1867 Hellmuth Levy Gutmann, Nr. 142/1863 Ferdinand Gutmann, Nr. 211/1865 Marianne Gutmann, 696 e Geburtsregister Nr. 106/1854 Bertha Gutmann, Nr. 164/1869 Ludwig Gutmann, Nr. 231/1855 Jenny Gutmann; UKE/IGEM, Archiv, Patienten-Karteikarte Marianne Gutmann der Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg; Stadtarchiv Pinneberg, Auskünfte über die Geschichte des heutigen Pflegeheims Pinneberg, Ortsteil Thesdorf, Rellinger Straße 37. Böhme, Klaus/Lohalm, Uwe (Hrsg.), Wege in den Tod. Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993; S. 14, 44ff. Bussche, Hendrik van den (Hrsg.), Medizinische Wissenschaft im "Dritten Reich", Berlin 1989, S. 289ff. Lohalm, Uwe, An der Inneren Front. Fürsorge für die Soldatenfamilie und "rassenhygienische" Krankenpolitik, in: Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg (Hrsg.), Hamburg im "Dritten Reich", 2. Aufl., Göttingen 2008, S. 445–470. Wunder, Michael, Die Auflösung von Friedrichsberg – Hintergründe und Folgen, in: Hamburger Ärzteblatt (1990) 4, S. 128–131.
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