Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Gerhard August Albert Trzebiatowsky * 1909

Sillemstraße 40 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

1943 Heilanstalt Weilmünster
ermordet am 15.11.1943

Gerhard Trzebiatowsky, born 7/9/1909 in Züllchow near Stettin, perished at the Weilmünster mental hospital on 11/15/1943

Sillemstrasse 40

Gerhard August Albert Trzebiatowsky was born on July 8th, 1909 in Züllchow near Stettin (the town is now part of the Polish city of Szczecin-Zelechowa). His parents were Gustav Trzebiatowsky (born 11/9/1878 in Züllchow), an electrician by trade, and his wife Helene, née Thomas. Züllchow, An industrial suburb of the then German city of Stettin, was at the northern boundary of the city, with workshops, factories and tenement buildings for the working class. Gerhard Trzebiatowsky’s grandparents had their own beer trading business, but most relatives were craftsmen or industrial workers, e.g. nail smith, metalworker or ship’s carpenter – the port city’s shipyards, e.g. "Vulcan” were near the street where they lived – like many of Stettin’s plants and factories that were situated on the left bank of the Oder along Uferstrasse, with the residential streets where the workers lived branching off uphill towards Züllchower Höhe.

We don’t know exactly when the family moved to Hamburg from Chausseestrasse in Züllchow, where they had lived with their relatives in an extended family. The name Trzebiatowsky occurs in the Hamburg address books for the first time in 1913. First, they lived in the center of town at Neustädter Strasse 16, later at Sillemstrasse 40 in Eimsbüttel. The profession of Gustav Trzebiatowsky, the head of the family, there was given as mechanic.

There was a son from Gustav’s first marriage (his wife’s name does not occur in the records), Werner Trzebiatowsky, a half-brother of Gerhard and his sister Käthe. In the 1920s, at least since 1927, Werner Trzebiatowsky was active in the Nazi storm troopers, the Hamburg section of the SA. He became leader of the SA Storm 2 (Eimsbüttel) and in 1930 was promoted Standartenführer of the SA Standarte II (Hamburg on the right bank of the Alster). In 1935, he became leader of the SA Standarte 76 and in 1936 was promoted to head of personnel of the SA group Hansa (Hamburg). In 1938, he ran as a candidate for the rigged election to the Great German Reichstag (which included Austria) on the "list of the Führer” (but did not win a seat). Käthe Trzebiatowsky later married and took the family name of her husband, Timm. I found no further information about family members of Gerhard Trzebiatowsky.

Gerhard Trzebiatowsky was about four years old when he came to Hamburg with his family. It is not documented which school he attended. In any case, it was a school for children with learning difficulties; in his fifth grade, he was declared unable to learn and discharged from school. On October 19th, 1929, he was admitted to the Alsterdorfer Anstalten, Hamburg’s largest institution for the mentally handicapped, as a patient. In a later interview, Gerhard, who – according to the records – hardly answered questions, and, if at all, with physical expressions, his mother had brought him there. In a first diagnosis of his status at Alsterdorf, it was assumed that his condition was "imbecility of a medium degree”, either congenital or the result of difficulties during birth (forceps delivery) causing a birth trauma. He was an "physically sturdy, slightly acromegaloid imbecile juvenile of docile disposition.” He speaks little, and then only low German, "always answers: ‘I don’t know.’” Can only be prompted to repeat various simple words”, it says in an initial statement.

In 1929, it was additionally noted that his demeanor was characterized by a calm, reclusive and autonomous behavior. In the following year, it said he was well settled in the institution and that his demeanor was characterized by his calm, unobtrusive and autonomous behavior and "could hardly be recognized in his character”, as he now talked a lot and also answered questions.

His candor, however, seems to have dwindled strongly in the following years. In opinions, his disposition to cleanliness that decreased through the years was repeatedly noted and, ultimately, his social behavior was also criticized. This was generally described as peaceful; however, in 1942, it was noted that sometimes behaved "maliciously” toward weaker fellow patients.

Four years before, at the beginning of 1938, Gerhard Trzebiatowsky had been subject to a forced sterilization; he and his parents had been compelled to agree to the operation; they had been summoned for an interview at the Alsterdorfer Anstalten on August 30th, 1937. Three weeks later, on September 22nd, the leading head physician Dr. Gerhard Kreyenberg had finished his expertise advocating sterilization, and on December 17th, the "hereditary health court” decree Gerhard’s "infertilization.” The operation was performed on January 31st, 1938 at the Eppendorf University Hospital.

Gerhard Trzebiatowsky’s sterilization in 1937 was listed as number 5097 in Hamburg. His sojourn at the Alsterdorfer Anstalten had abetted this encroachment in his life, as he had been subject to the treatment of the physician who not only vehemently advocated sterilization, but later on also performed selections for "Euthanasia.”

Gerhard’s mother had applied for five days’ leave from the institution for Christmas 1937; the family wanted to pick up on Christmas day. On previous leaves, his return to the hospital had regularly been delayed.

Gerhard Trzebiatowsky showed little disposition to join in housework at the Alsterdorfer Anstalten. This at least was the opinion of the medical personnel attending him – on whom his motivation to work depended: "It is hard to deploy him to cleaning work” it read in 1930 at the beginning of his stay”, and later "can only be used for the simples form of assistance (1937). If this already indicated an appraisal of the usefulness of his doing, the last report on him in 1942 categorically ruled: "Patient can do only the simplest domestic work under supervision, but even then is very fidgety and superficial.”

The health authorities tried to force cure, care and welfare institutions to rationalize their activities in order to save on the expenses for attending to ill persons and those in need of care. Deploying persons fit for work to tasks that benefited the institutions or assign them to tasks in the living quarters, the kitchen, the parks or the kitchen gardens was one of the methods of economizing healthcare.

Later, during the war, the necessity to relocate mental patients to make room for the treatment of somatic and war injuries arose, and the institutions were also called to provide lodging for "personnel essential for the war economy”, i.e. forced labor for the deployment in the armaments industry.

Gerhard Trzebiatowsky’s hospital records do not reveal whether his history was re-interpreted to suit the new circumstances. The last opinion for the welfare agency of the city of Hamburg of February 25th, 1942 stated "continuing hospitalization is required.” The welfare agency therefore attested Gerhard Trzebiatowsky’s "need for institutional care” for another five years, i.e. until the end of 1946.

However, his attending physician Dr. Schirndorf had already on February 20th, 1940 diagnosed Trzebiatowsky with "idiocy” and determined that he "needed complete attendance” when asked if the patient was fit for military service; Prof. Schäfer’s appraisal in his expertise of February 25th, 1941, was similar; he called Gerhard Trzebiatowsky an "imbecile on the verge of idiocy.” It was decided that Trzebiatowsky was to be transferred to Dept. 59 on February 15th, 1943 (this was a house for Weak” men in need of care).

The disaster expected for Hamburg struck in July and August of 1943. The devastating air raids of the British-American "Operation Gomorrha” not only wounded thousands of persons who had to be cared for in the hospitals and emergency hospitals – the Alsterdorfer Anstalten among the latter – but Alsterdorf itself had suffered from the bombings of July 30th, causing casualties among the institution’s own patients that had to be additionally attended. The Alsterdorf management led by Pastor Friedrich Lensch decided to relocate their mentally ill and demented patients an started organizing their removal – by reverting to the network of relocation and killing institutions that existed in Germany since the "operation T4.” The mental hospitals "Landesheilanstalt Eichberg" and "Landesheilanstalt Weilmünster" were among the institutions that temporarily accommodated mentally ill persons.

The Alsterdorf management selected the patients to be relocated, Gerhard Trzebiatowsky was among them. The last entry in his hospital record, dated August 7th, 1943, reads: "Relocated to Eichberg due to heavy bomb damage in Alsterdorf. Dr. Kreyenberg."

Trzebiatowsky was one of 76 patients from Alsterdorf on the transport, children among them. From the Langenhorn railroad freight terminal, they were taken to the Eichberg mental hospital, along with 78 men from the Institution in Hamburg-Langenhorn. The Eichberg hospital was hopelessly overcrowded; the attending staff there had been successively reduced over the years, so that adequate care of the patients was impossible. Later investigations of the situation at Eichberg revealed that there were so-called "unattended wards” existed, where the patients were left to themselves and languished in agony. The death rate among the patients was high. "When the transport from Hamburg arrived in Eichberg on August 8th, 1943, the killing machinery was running at full speed”, an investigation report about the events in Eichberg stated in the 1980s.

Only four of the 76 men and children on the transport that left the Alsterdorfer Anstalten on August 7th, 1943 and arrived at Eichberg the next day survived May 1945. 72 were murdered, one man died of exhaustion only a few months later, and three survived the year 1945.

Gerhard Trzebiatowsky was again transferred from Eichberg and perished on November 15th, 1943 at the Weilmünster mental hospital – only three months after Dr. Gerhard Kreyenberg had him removed from Hamburg. Nothing is known about the circumstances of his death.

In Gerhard Trzebiatowsky’s preserved hospital records there is a special form with standard questions and tasks that served as the basis for an intelligence test. Since Gerhard Trzebiatowsky was unable to read, write or calculate, only a few of his answers could be recorded. One page was reserved for a drawing. The proband’s task was to draw a house; the drawing was to be done on a special sheet and pasted into the form.

Somebody has ripped that sheet from the form, in such a way, that the drawing was destroyed. However, a few remaining shreds give a vague idea of what a house was for Gerhard Trzebiatowsky.

He drew a large-area front view of a house with a pitched roof beginning at the front side, i.e. a hipped roof. The proportions of this sketch are well calculated, the lines exactly drawn. The roof is covered in elaborate detail, not with tiles, but with red shingles, whose lower, visible edges are precisely rounded. Below the completely covered roof, the outlines of the front of the house are drawn. They, too, are correct and straight; the proportions of the roof and the body of the building coincide; however, it seems that the artist did not have enough time to the design of the house with windows and doors Then façade area remained blank. Something colorful arises on the right side of the house If you mentally complete the disrupted lines, it could well be a balloon that Gerhard Trzebiatowsky decorated with a checkered pattern.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2019
© Peter Offenborn

Quellen: Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv Az. V 122 (Sonderakte); Adressbuch Stettin. Stettin 1911 (nach: www.pommerndatenbank.de; 29.9.2010); Peter von Rönn, Die Entwicklung der Anstalt Langenhorn in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus; Regina Marien-Lunderup, Die Anstalten Eichberg und Weilmünster; beide in: Peter von Rönn u. a., Wege in den Tod, S. 27–135 bzw. S. 305–319; Michael Wunder u. a., Auf dieser schiefen Ebene, S. 78f., 111f., 177, 197, 204; Michael Wunder, Von der Anstaltsfürsorge zu den Anstaltstötungen, in: Angelika Ebbinghaus u.a., Hamburg im "Dritten Reich", S. 394–407; Peter Sand­ner, Die Landesheilanstalt Weilmünster; Alfred Conn, Aufzeichnungen [über die SA in Hamburg]. Tiposkript [ca. 1953], S. 8/10 und 109 [FZH 11 C 1]; Hamburger Tageblatt Nr. 68 vom 10.3.1935, Nr. 322 vom 24.11.1936 und Nr. 83 vom 8.4.1938.