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Claus Harder * 1936

Greifswalder Straße 7 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Georg)

HIER WOHNTE
CLAUS HARDER
JG. 1936
EINGEWIESEN 1943
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
‚VERLEGT‘ 7.8.1943
‚HEILANSTALT‘ EICHBERG
ERMORDET 13.8.1943

Claus Otto Heinrich Harder, born 15 Dec. 1936 in Hamburg, murdered in the Eichberg Mental Hospital in the Rheingau on 13 Aug. 1943

last address: Greifswalder Straße 7

Before his commitment to the Alsterdorf Institution (Alsterdorfer Anstalten), Claus Harder lived with his parents, pest control technician Erich Harder and his wife, Elisabeth, née Timmann. As a young child, he contracted measles, rickets and diphtheria, and his speech development was delayed. Before his admission to Alsterdorf for "feeblemindedness” in July 1943 (he had been turned away there twice in 1942 because of "overcrowding”), he lived intermittently in other institutions, including one in Langenhorn. After less than a month in residence, he was transferred, along with 48 men and 27 other children, from Alsterdorf to the Eichberg Mental Hospital (Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Eichberg) in the Rheingau. Only a few days later, on 13 Aug. 1943, the little boy, like almost all the other children transported there with him, was probably given a lethal injection of morphine/scopolamine. There is a Stumbling Stone for Claus Harder in front of his parents’ former home at Greifswalder Straße 7.

Translator: Kathleen Luft

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: Stiftung Alsterdorf, Patientenakten der Alsterdorfer Anstalten, V31 (C. Harder); M. Wunder/I. Genkel/H. Jenner, "Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr". Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1987, S. 196–204.