Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Johanna Stüve * 1923

Kanalstraße 52 (Hamburg-Nord, Uhlenhorst)

HIER WOHNTE
JOHANNA STÜVE
JG. 1923
EINGEWIESEN 1931
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
‚VERLEGT‘ 16.8.1943
HEILANSTALT
AM STEINHOF / WIEN
ERMORDET 30.3.1944

Meta Johanna Stüve, born 14.3.1923 in Twielenfleth, admitted to the Provincial Sanatorium and Nursing Home in Langenhagen near Hanover on 2.2.1928, admitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum ("Alsterdorfer Anstalten", now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on 23.7.1931, deported to Vienna on 16.8.1943 to the "Wagner von Jauregg - Curative and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna” ("Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien"), died there on 30.3.1944

Kanalstraße 52 (formerly Canalstraße), Winterhude

Meta Johanna Stüve (called Johanna) was born on 14 March 1923 in the small village of Twielenfleth (now Hollern-Twielenfleth in the county of Stade). Her mother, Meta Martha Magdalena Stüve, born on 18 October 1898 in the then still independent Prussian town of Wandsbek, was not married at the time of her daughter's birth. She lived with her parents Theodor and Katharina Stüve in Twielenfleth during her confinement. It is assumed that Johanna's biological father was Bernhard Winzer.

Johanna Stüve was blind from birth. She was missing both eyeballs. She recognised people by their voice. The girl also suffered from a mental disability from birth. She was unable to speak and learnt to walk late and with difficulty.

Johanna Stüve lived with her grandparents in Twielenfleth for the first few years of her life, who from around 1926/1927 had the impression that their grandchild was regressing. Johanna Stüve's grandmother and the parish nurse from Twielenfleth took the girl to the Provincial Sanatorium and Nursing Home in Langenhagen, north of Hanover, on 2 February 1928. Johanna is said to have spoken only a few words on admission. She knew her mother and was obedient and clean. The gracefully built girl had been able to dress and undress herself. A few weeks later, it was noted that Johanna did not play with toys and did not keep them in her hands; she liked it when carers ‘took her and played with her’. She then plucked at their clothes, bit their fingers and slapped their hands. She could only stand unsteadily on her own and could only walk with support. Overall, Johanna was described as a ‘quiet, modest girl’, ‘friendly, unobtrusive, lowly, must be completely worried’. At her mother's request, Johanna Stüve was released from the institution in Langenhagen on 1 May 1928. No reasons are given for this.

In 1929 or 1930, the Provincial Directorate of the Province of Hanover, to whose area of responsibility Twielenfleth belonged at the time, ordered that Johanna Stüve should be enrolled at the Provincial Institution for the Blind (Provinzial- und Blindenanstalt) in Hanover-Kirchrode. Even before she started school, however, her mother moved with the child to Canalstraße 52 in Hamburg-Uhlenhorst (now Kanalstraße). Mother and daughter lived there in a basement as subtenants.

With the move, responsibility for Johanna's school attendance was transferred to the city of Hamburg. In a note signed by the doctors Ubenauf and Villinger from the Hamburg Welfare Office, Johanna Stüve's unemployed mother was described as a very orderly and upright, but mentally weak woman. She stated that her daughter had only learnt to walk at the age of six and still spoke inarticulately. The doctors attested that Johanna Stüve was in a good general physical condition. Apart from the absence of both eyeballs, there were no malformations. The eyelids had grown together except for a small slit. In contrast, Johanna's hearing was categorised as good. After overcoming her initial shyness, Johanna behaved quite uninhibitedly, constantly making grunting noises, kicking her feet and moving her arms rhythmically. She had largely reproduced a rehearsed song correctly. Overall, a ‘cerebral malformation combined with a moderate degree of mental deficiency’ (congenital malformation of the blood vessels within the brain) was diagnosed. As a result, it was recommended that Johanna Stüve be admitted to the Alsterdorfer Anstalten (now the Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf).

Johanna Stüve was admitted there on 23 July 1931. She was very homesick at first and cried a lot. Her mother visited Johanna several times in 1932 and 1933. Various relatives took the girl on holiday with them.

At the beginning of 1934, the staff noted that Johanna Stüve was trying to walk alone and orientate herself by noises and voices. She had become very lively and was able to speak a few words. She also sought intensive contact with her fellow patients and caressed them.

Over the next few years, the reports were repeated, especially about Johanna's attempts to become more independent, until the entries in her patient file changed from 1941 onwards. Now it was no longer progress but regression in her development that was emphasised: ‘Must be completely taken care of in personal hygiene and fed. She is calm, agreeable and obedient, only plays with a spoon. She announces her needs, is clean and likes to listen to music.’

During the heavy air raids on Hamburg at the end of July/beginning of August 1943 (‘Operation Gomorrah’), the Alsterdorf Asylum also suffered bomb damage. The head of the institution, SA member Pastor Friedrich Lensch, took the opportunity, with the approval of the health authorities, to get rid of some of the residents who were considered ‘weak in labour, in need of care or particularly difficult’ by transporting them to other sanatoriums and nursing homes. On 16 August 1943, 228 women and girls from Alsterdorf and 72 girls and women from the Sanatorium and Nursing Home Langenhorn were ‘transferred’ on one of these transports to the ‘Wagner von Jauregg Sanatorium and Nursing Home of the city of Vienna’ (also known as the ‘Am Steinhof’ institution). Johanna Stüve was among them.

Meta Stüve, Johanna's mother, gave birth to her second child, Karl Stüve, on 2 May 1932. In July 1933, she married Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Graht, born on 15 December 1904, and had two sons: Rudolf, born on 28 February 1934, and Heinz Wilhelm, born on 22 February 1935. The marriage ended in divorce in July 1938. Meta Graht, probably together with her sons, was evacuated to Goeschnitz in Upper Franconia before the air raids on Hamburg in July/August 1943. Presumably worried about her daughter during the air raids on Hamburg, she wrote to the Alsterdorf Asylum on 23 August 1943 to ask whether Johanna was still there. She received the reply that ‘Hannele has been transferred to Vienna, Wagner von Jauregg Institution, as the Alsterdorf Asylum has lost so many rooms due to bomb damage that it has become necessary to evacuate around 500 inmates. Sister Alwine accompanied Hannele and the other inmates to Vienna herself and delivered them to the institution, where she got the impression that ‘our inmates will have a good time there’.

Johanna Stüve weighed 31kg when she arrived in Vienna. While the last assessments in Alsterdorf already showed little affection, the comments about the now young woman were characterised by even greater distance: ‘In need of care, stupid, unclean, speech uneducated, difficult to understand, apathetic. Diagnosis: congenital feeblemindedness (1a). Mother and an aunt limited.’

Johanna, who had endeavoured to improve her ability to walk in Alsterdorf and to orientate herself locally despite her blindness, had been in bed constantly since November. On 19 January 1944, she was transferred to the ‘infection pavilion’ 19, which was a place of induced death. The last note in her Vienna medical file read: ‘Permanently in bed, pale, losing weight.’ After five months in Vienna, the weight chart still showed 24 kg. This was 77% of her initial weight.

When Johanna Stüve allegedly bit her hands open on 6 February 1944, her movement options were restricted with a protective jacket (euphemistic term for a ‘straitjacket’). Two months later, on 28 February, she was again told: ‘To bed’ and ‘invalid, quiet, unclean, in need of care, self-harm’.

Johanna Stüve died on 30 March 1944.

Although there is no indication of pulmonary tuberculosis in the patient file up to that point, ‘pulmonary tuberculosis’ was noted as the cause of death, as in many other cases.

The head physician Barbara Uiberrak, who was deeply involved in the murder of patients in the Vienna asylum, was also responsible for the autopsy of Johanna Stüve's body. She recorded the pathological anatomical cause of death as ‘gangraenapulmonum’ (pulmonary gangrene, gangrenous death of individual parts of the lung with signs of putrefaction) and ordered ‘preliminary fixation of the brain in 4% formol.’

It is not known how Johanna's mother learnt of her daughter's death. She telegraphed to Vienna on 31 March that she wanted to come to Vienna for the funeral on Sunday morning. This meant 2 April. It is not known whether she was able to realise this.

In the ‘Wagner von Jauregg Sanatorium and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna’, patients continued to be systematically murdered even after the official halt to the murder of the sick in the gas murder centres at the end of August 1941, through overdoses of medication, non-treatment of illnesses and, above all, through food deprivation. Of the 300 girls and women from Hamburg, 257 died by the end of 1945, 196 of them from Alsterdorf.

Stand: December 2024
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg verschiedene Jahrgänge, StaH 332-5 Standesämter3897 Geburtsregister Nr. 127/1898 (Meta Martha Magdalena Stüve), 14098 Heiratsregister Nr. 375/1933 (Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Graht/Meta Martha Magdalena Stüve; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf Archiv, V 229 (Sonderakte Johanna Stüve). Harald Jenner, Michael Wunder, Hamburger Gedenkbuch Euthanasie – Die Toten 1939-1945, Hamburg 2017, S. 534.Peter von Rönn, Der Transport nach Wien, in: Peter von Rönn u.a., Wege in den Tod, Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 425 ff. Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 283 ff., 331 ff. Geschichte der Provinzial- Heil- und Pflegeanstalt zu Langenhagen https://psychiatrie-langenhagen.krh.de/ueber-uns/geschichte (Zugriff 14.5.2024).