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Walter Zeinhofer * 1905

Gerade Straße 17 (Harburg, Harburg)

HIER WOHNTE
WALTER ZEINHOFER
JG. 1905
ENTRECHTET / GEDEMÜTIGT
VERHAFTET 1942
ZUCHTHAUS HAMELN
ERMORDET
20.1.1945

Karl August Walter Zeinhofer, born on 2 Mar. 1905 in Hamburg, detained several times, died on 20 Jan. 1945 in the Hameln penitentiary, Holzen subcamp near Eschershausen

District of Harburg-Altstadt, Gerade Strasse 17

The worker Walter Zeinhofer was born on 2 Mar. 1905 in Hamburg. Since his father, the foreman Josef Zeinhofer, was Austrian, he automatically received Austrian citizenship. After the early death of his mother Frieda, née Koch, his father entered into a second marriage, which produced half-brother Alfred, who was 21 years younger. Walter Zeinhofer had a good relationship with all family members. After attending the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule), he did a commercial apprenticeship that he completed in 1923. Afterward, he worked as an unskilled worker in a tinfoil factory due to a lack of work in the commercial sector.

Because of his homosexuality, Walter Zeinhofer came into conflict with the law three times before his death sentence was indirectly passed with the 1942 verdict: In 1934, he was surprised at night by a police officer with a sexual partner at a public restroom on Sievekingplatz. He had to pay a fine of 60 RM (reichsmark) for "causing a public nuisance.” In 1936 and 1939, he was sentenced for "unnatural sexual offenses” ("widernatürliche Unzucht”) in accordance with Sec. 175 [of the Reich Criminal Code] to three months and, respectively, one year in prison, which he served in the Glasmoor penitentiary. On 12 Nov. 1936, he was deported from Germany to his "home country” of Austria, where he worked in a metal furniture factory. After Austria’s "annexation” to the German Reich, he automatically became a German citizen and returned to his native city of Hamburg.

After the interrogation of one of his partners, Walter Zeinhofer was again caught in the clutches of the Nazis at the end of Jan. 1942. The forensic pathologist Hans Koopmann, who was consulted to provide a medical opinion in the course of the proceedings, made an unfavorable prognosis and pleaded – as he did with many other homosexuals – for "voluntary” castration and protective measures. On 30 June 1942, the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht) sentenced Walter Zeinhofer as a "dangerous habitual criminal” for violation of Sec. 175 in six cases to a two-year prison sentence followed by "preventive detention.”

As a convict and from 28 Jan. 1944 onward, as a "preventive detention prisoner” ("Sicherheitsverwahrter”), Walter Zeinhofer had to perform forced labor in the armaments production. In Holzen near Eschershausen, a subcamp of the Hameln penitentiary with approx. 280 inmates was built. There, asphalt tunnels were to be constructed underground for several armament plants. The project was covertly named "Hecht.” Starting in June 1944, the Hameln penitentiary was declared an armaments factory within the framework of total warfare. For the prisoners, this meant a ban on writing and an increasing deterioration of the nutritional situation with subsequent epidemics. On 20 Jan. 1945, Walter Zeinhofer officially died of "cardiac insufficiency” at the age of 40 in the Hameln penitentiary, Holzen subcamp near Eschershausen.

Since Walter Zeinhofer’s last freely chosen residence was at Gerade Strasse 17 in Harburg, a Stolperstein located there commemorates his fate. The initiative "Gemeinsam gegen das Vergessen – Stolpersteine für homosexuelle NS-Opfer” ("Together against forgetting – Stolpersteine for homosexual victims of Nazism”) came into contact with half-brother Alfred Zeinhofer through press releases on the occasion of the relocation of the Stolperstein there. One of the few known relatives of this group of victims, he was the guest of honor at the exhibition on homosexual persecution in Hamburg, which opened at the Neuengamme concentration camp memorial on 26 Apr. 2008.


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

Stand: May 2019
© Bernhard Rosenkranz(†)/Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 3288 und 4914/42; 331-1II Polizeibehörde II, Abl. 15, Band 2; 242-1II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Abl. 13, 16, 1998/1; Auskunft Rainer Hoffschildt, Hannover von 2008 mit besonderem Dank für den Hinweis auf die Grabstelle; Rosenkranz u. a., Homosexuellen-Verfolgung, S. 268.