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Hjalmar Vierarm * 1902

Oelkersallee 25 (Altona, Altona-Nord)

HIER WOHNTE
HJALMAR VIERARM
JG. 1902
VERHAFTET 1935
NEUENGAMME
AUSSENLAGER
SALZGITTER-WATENSTEDT
ERMORDET 7.4.1945

further stumbling stones in Oelkersallee 25:
Franziska Starken

Hjalmar Louis Max Vierarm, born on 7 Sept. 1902 Altona, died on 7 Apr. 1945 in the Neuengamme concentration camp, Salzgitter-Watenstedt subcamp

Oelkersallee 25 a/b

Hjalmar Vierarm was born in 1902 on the third floor of the house at Kleine Papagoyenstrasse 27 in Altona’s historic downtown. The son of the cigar maker Max Vierarm and his wife Maria, née Schostack, he was baptized a Lutheran. After the divorce of the parents, the son grew up with foster parents. While the father later lived in Hamburg’s Hopfenstrasse, the mother, the newly married Mrs. Pallesen, moved to Denmark.

Even if Hjalmar Vierarm maintained in a curriculum vitae written in 1944 to have "had good foster parents” as well as "work and job positions throughout,” he nonetheless did not learn any vocation after attending the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule) and special needs school. Instead, he made ends meet with casual work and receiving four previous convictions in the 1920s for trading in stolen goods, theft, aiding and abetting, as well as illegal Sunday sales. In 1930, he was unemployed and lived together with the worker Rudolf Benthien of the same age in Altona at Parallelstrasse 38 (today Eifflerstrasse) in a basement room originally intended only as a storeroom. On the occasion of an excessive birthday party in Aug. 1930, they were denounced to police as homosexuals by two neighbors and a Hamburg domestic help from Venusberg street: Allegedly, they slept in the same bed, were inclined to unnatural sexual offenses [widernatürliche Unzucht], and had sexual relations with men frequenting their place. Even in the period of the Weimar Republic, Sec. 175 of the Reich Criminal Code (Reichsstrafgesetzbuch – RStGB) was already in effect, a law that made acts similar to homosexual intercourse and homosexual intercourse punishable offenses. As a result, the Altona Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated criminal proceedings against the two avowed homosexual men. On 14 Oct. 1930, the local court of lay assessors (Schöffengericht) presided over by Regional Court Director [Landgerichtsdirektor] Otto Begemann sentenced both defendants for homosexual acts to one month in prison each in accordance with Sec. 175. The charge of them having operated a "house of ill repute” in their basement apartment and thus having practiced "procuration” could not be substantiated. Suspension of the prison term, applied for by both convicted men, was denied Hjalmar Vierarm due to his "completely desolate” appearance.

Five years later, at the beginning of the Nazi period and shortly before the tightening of Sec. 175 across the Reich, with Hjalmar Vierarm by then considered as previously convicted for the same offense, he was entangled in criminal proceedings in accordance with Sec. 175 against four defendants in the summer of 1935. At this time, he resided at Kleine Brauerstrasse 12 and on 23 June 1935, police committed him to the Altona court prison. In August, he was indicted for having tolerated acts similar to sexual intercourse to be carried out on him. On 1 Oct. 1935, the Altona court of lay assessors (Schöffengericht) presided over by Julius Lichtwerk, an associate judge at the District Court (Amtsgerichtsrat), sentenced the circle of friends for "unnatural sexual offenses,” with Hjalmar Vierarm receiving a two-year prison term. The convicted men had met in Hamburg gay bars, including "Zu den drei Sternen” in Hamburg-Neustadt and the "Monte Carlo” pool hall on Reeperbahn in St. Pauli. Starting on 18 Oct. 1935, Hjalmar Vierarm served the long prison terms in the Neumünster penitentiary from which he was released on 25 June 1937.

Karl Lubatsch, a buffet waiter born in 1909, was considered a male prostitute in this trial and initially, he was imprisonment in Neumünster as well, though subsequently being subjected to more severe conditions of detention in one of the Emsland camps. After another conviction in Hamburg in 1937, an odyssey through different prisons, penal and concentration camps awaited this man until the end of the war, before living to see his liberation from an external camp detachment (Aussenlager) of the Mauthausen concentration camp on 5 May 1945.

Hjalmar Vierarm did not have such "luck.” After his release from prison in 1937, he lived at changing addresses in Altona but also in Kiel and Rade near Hamburg. In Jan. 1938, he moved to Kiel. He found employment there as a worker until early 1944 and tried to establish homosexual contacts despite the pressure of Nazi persecution. For this purpose, on 2 Feb. 1944 he went to the public restroom in the Dahlmannstrasse building complex (at "Kleines Kiel”), known in Kiel as a meeting spot for homosexuals. An attempt to approach a Maschinen-Obergefreiter [equivalent to Fireman 2nd Class] of the German Wehrmacht was his undoing. Apparently, this man had made Hjalmar Vierarm out to be a homosexual beforehand, observing him, and taking him to the police station after the "come-on.” He was arrested at 10.50 p.m. and committed by the Kiel criminal investigation department to the local pretrial detention facility. On 27 Apr. 1944, the Kiel District Court (Amtsgericht) sentenced him to nine months in prison for assault in coincidence with an "unnatural sexual offense” ("widernatürliche Unzucht”), with the period of pretrial detention calculated against his prison term. He served his sentence starting on 11 May 1944 in the Lübeck-Lauerhof men’s prison, working in war-related operations at the can factory there. A conduct report dated 30 Sept. 1944 stated that "nothing unfavorable” has "become known about him so far,” and that he "[had] carried out the work assigned to him without giving any cause for complaint.” Nevertheless, stereotypical descriptions of homosexuals were added to the report written by some chief administrative director (Verwaltungsoberinspektor): "I have the definite impression to be dealing with a somewhat soft and feeble character, who allows himself to drift through life rather than acting according to his own will.” Since Hjalmar Vierarm, in keeping with the facts, portrayed [the deed based on which] his last sentence [was passed] only as an "attempt,” the penal institution took the view that he refused to see "the absolutely reprehensible nature of his actions” and thus did "not impart the impression of having given up his vice by virtue of his penalty by this time.” The prison official was firmly convinced that Hjalmar Vierarm would "commit a criminal offense again sooner or later … because in accordance with his personality traits and dispositions he” would "not easily … be able to let go … of his vice.” He also deemed "preventive police detention appropriate,” even though "this” would "probably not” be able "to cure V.[ierarm] … it might at least have a deterring effect!”

Thus, it was not surprising that shortly before the end of his prison term in Lübeck on 1 Nov. 1944, the Kiel branch of the criminal investigation department ordered "preventive police detention,” asking the penal institution "not to release V. after having served his sentence but to take him on a collective transport to the Kiel police prison.” With respect to the approaching end of the war in May 1945, the comparatively "short” term of imprisonment proved his undoing: On 26 Nov. 1944, he was transferred to the Kiel police prison. As we know only from the card file of the Jammertal Cemetery, where prisoners of the subcamp in Salzgitter-Drütte of the Neuengamme concentration camp were buried, Hjalmar Vierarm had prisoner number 68,991. This suggests a committal to the Neuengamme concentration camp in the first half of Jan. 1945. His death on 7 Apr. 1945 in "Watenstedt I” due to "cardiac arrest” ("Herzschlag”) as the official cause of death coincides with the evacuation of the camp by the SS; in this operation alone, approx. 70 prisoners were left behind dead at the makeshift train station. Moreover, at the beginning of 1945, the camp received transports of numerous sick concentration camp prisoners whose chances of survival were small. Today his grave is located in the Jammertal Cemetery of Honor (Ehrenfriedhof Jammertal), Field III, Row 8, Grave H.

Based on more recent research we know that Hjalmar Vierarm relocated to Kiel for good in Jan. 1938, which means the last residence of his own choosing is technically not Oelkersallee 25 in Altona but Schlossstrasse 34 in Kiel. Nevertheless, Altona is a proper commemorative place for him because he resided there most of his life, until the intensification of persecution by the Nazis.


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

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

Quellen: LSH, Abteilung 357.3 (Justizvollzugsanstalt Lübeck), Nr. 9592 und Abteilung 352.1 (Landgericht und Staatsanwaltschaft Altona), Nr. 1548 und Nr. 6457, mit Dank an Dr. Stefan Micheler, der uns Einblick in seine Aufzeichnungen über die von 1933 bis 1937 in Altona geführten Verfahren nach § 175 gab, die im LSH verwahrt werden, Dr. Elke Imberger, LSH, für die Vorbereitung einer Vorort-Recherche und Alyn Beßmann, KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, für ihre Auskunft vom 10.9.2014 und zur Friedhofskartei Salzgitter-Jammertal, jam 00000477; StaH, 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferung 13; StaH 332-5 Standesämter, 13879 (Eintrag Nr. 2541); StaH 332-8 Meldewesen, A 34/1 (= 741-4 Fotoarchiv, K 4573); Rosenkranz/Bollmann/Lorenz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung, S. 263.