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Otto Siess * 1902

Milchstraße 25 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
OTTO SIESS
JG. 1902
EINGEWIESEN 1939
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
´VERLEGT` 28.7.1941
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
27.11.1941 TIEGENHOF
ERMORDET 11.3.1942

Otto Siess, born on 16.5.1902 in Hamburg, admitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum (Alsterdorfer Anstalten, now the Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on 28.8.1939, transferred on 28.7.1941 to the Sanatorium and Nursing Home Hamburg-Langenhorn, transferred on 27.11.1941 to the "Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof" (polish: Dziekanka) near Gnesen (polish: Gniezno), murdered on 11.3.1942

Milchstraße 25

Wilhelm Otto Siess (known as Otto) was born on 16 May 1902, the son of Marten Hermann and his wife Caroline Auguste Anna Siess, née Müller, at Milchstraße 25 in the Rotherbaum district of Hamburg. His parents had married in Hamburg on 12 May 1900. His father, born on 22 January 1857, came from the small town of Barlt in Süderdithmarschen, while his mother, born on 4 February 1871, came from Spremberg in Lusatia. At the time of his marriage, Marten Hermann Siess worked as a coachman, and shortly afterwards as a feed merchant. When Otto Siess was born, he was working as a bread merchant.

Otto Siess had an older sister, Lina Marie Margarethe, who was born on 21 October 1900 and died at the age of one.

Marten Hermann Siess died on 4 November 1902 at the age of 45. His widow remarried on 17 May 1906 to the gardener Hermann John Curt Vosgerau, born in Hamburg in 1879. This marriage was divorced in 1922 and renewed in 1929.

We know nothing about Otto Siess' childhood, youth and adult life. On 28 August 1939, he was transferred together with 29 other men from the Sanatorium and Nursing Home Hamburg-Langenhorn to what was then the Alsterdorf Asylum (Alsterdorfer Anstalten today the Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf). This is evident from the admission and discharge register of the Langenhorn institution and the admission register of the Alsterdorf Asylum.

There are no further records of Otto Siess' stay at the Langenhorn institution. We therefore do not know when Otto Siess became a patient at the Sanatorium and Nursing Home Langenhorn.

The only information we have about Otto Siess is recorded on an index card that was created for the Hamburg Health Passport Archive, established in 1934 for the purpose of conducting a "hereditary biological inventory" of the population in this region. The entries on these "hereditary health index cards" or "family trees" are consistently written in derogatory and condemnatory language. They usually contain remarks such as "incurable", "unable to perform productive work", or "completely unfit for work". This was also the case with Otto Siess: "It was a typical terminal case of schizophrenia, a trivial, dull, negative, stupidity. He no longer showed any deep emotions towards his environment. As a result, he was considered incurably ill. He refused to perform any work."

On 28 July 1941, at least 50 men from the Alsterdorf Asylum were initially transferred to the Sanatorium and Nursing Home Langenhorn. Otto Siess was among them. Three days later, another transport followed with at least 20 women. The patients were taken to Langenhorn in buses belonging to the "Gemeinnützige Krankentransport-Gesellschaft" (GeKraT).

Michael Wunder, who researched the history of the murdered Alsterdorf patients, pointed out that the transports, which consisted mainly of particularly frail and unfit people, had been compiled on the basis of registration forms sent to the "Euthanasia" headquarters at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. SA member Pastor Lensch, then director of the Alsterdorf institutions, had received a corresponding list of transport participants from the Hamburg health authorities. Health Senator Ofterdinger had assured him that this was merely a transfer to relieve the Alsterdorf Asylum and make good use of the empty beds in Langenhorn. Nevertheless, excitement spread among the inmates when the GeKraT buses drove onto the grounds of the Alsterdorf Asylum. Due to the church protests against Euthanasia, which had reached their peak throughout the Reich at that time, and reports from institutions in southern and eastern Germany, the killing operations were well known among the nurses at the Alsterdorf Asylum and, in some cases, among the inmates themselves. For this reason, Lensch falsely claimed in a circular letter to all nursing staff that the transport was an "administrative act" that had "nothing to do with other measures".

Four months later, on 27 November 1941, Otto Siess was transferred with other women and men from Langenhorn to the "Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof" (polish: Dziekanka) near Gnesen (polish: Gniezno). The "Hamburg Euthanasia Memorial Book" contains the names of 66 former Alsterdorf patients who were taken there on this transport. (Four of the 70 Alsterdorf patients had died in Langenhorn before the transport.) Between 26 September and 27 November 1941, more than 200 people were transported from the Langenhorn mental hospital to the "Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof" in several transports. The memorial book lists 206 people.

The Dziekanka psychiatric hospital near Gniezno had been occupied by the German Wehrmacht in October 1939 and given the name "Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof". By the summer/autumn of 1941, the Germans had murdered the Polish patients there in several operations. When the Hamburg patients arrived in Tiegenhof, they too met this fate. They were killed by systematic starvation, overdose of medication and neglect. The Tiegenhof accommodation had separate killing rooms where the defenceless and exhausted victims were injected with lethal substances, which were administered or dissolved in soup.

Otto Siess died on 11 March 1942 at the age of just under 40 – certainly not of natural causes. The cause of death stated on his death certificate was "general physical and circulatory weakness due to schizophrenia".

Stand: February 2026
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg (diverse Jahrgänge); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13784 Geburtsregister Nr. 1189/1902 (Wilhelm Otto Siess), 8602 Heiratsregister Nr. 223/1900 (Marten Hermann Siess/Caroline Auguste Anna Müller), 8644 Heiratsregister Nr. 118/1906 (Hermann John Curt Vosgerau/Caroline Auguste Anna verw. Siess geb. Müller), 13233 Heiratsregister Nr. 383/1929 (Hermann John Curt Vosgerau/Caroline Auguste Anna gesch. Vosgerau verw. Siess geb. Müller), 7947 Sterberegister Nr. 2534/1901 (Lina Marie Margarethe Siess), 7957 Sterberegister Nr. 2656/1902 (Marten Hermann Siess), 352-8/7 Zu- und Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.9.39-27.1.41. Standesamt Gniezno Sterberegister Gnesen Nr. 98/1942 (Wilhelm Otto Siess). Archiv der Evangelischen Stiftung Alsterdorf, Aufnahmebuch und Erbgesundheitskartei. Harald Jenner, Michael Wunder, Hamburger Gedenkbuch Euthanasie – Die Toten 1939-1945, Hamburg 2017. Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner: Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, 3. Auflage, Stuttgart 2016, S. 36, 269 ff.; Enno Schwanke, Die Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Tiegenhof, Die nationalsozialistische Euthanasie in Polen während des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Frankfurt/M 2015.