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Otto Popert * 1883

Eppendorfer Weg 189 (Eimsbüttel, Hoheluft-West)

HIER WOHNTE
OTTO POPERT
JG. 1883
EINGEWIESEN 1918
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
‚VERLEGT‘ 27.11.1941
‚HEILANSTALT‘
TIEGENHOF / GNIEZNO
ERMORDET 5.5.1942

Otto Adolph Popert, born 24.5.1883 in Hamburg, admitted to the former Friedrichsberg mental hospital on 5.7.1915, since around 1918 in the Langenhorn state hospital, deported on 27.11.1941 to the ‘Gauheilanstalt Tiegenhof’ (Dziekanka),
died on 5.5.1942 in Tiegenhof (Gniezno)

Eppendorfer Weg 189 (Eimsbüttel)

Otto Adolph Popert was born on 24 May 1883 in Hamburg-Rotherbaum, An der Verbindungsbahn 8. His parents, the Jewish couple Julchen Popert, née Lion, and the merchant Philipp (Felipe) Popert, had had six children before Otto.

Julchen Popert, née Lion, was born on 20 September 1840 in Wittenburg (Mecklenburg), her husband Philipp Popert on 20 September 1825 in Goldingen in Kurland (now Latvia). The exact date of their marriage is not known, but it must have been 1865 or earlier, as their first child, Carlota, was born on 26 August 1866. Like the following three children, Frederica, born on 10 January 1868, Juanita, born on 24 May 1872, and Fernando, born on 9 November 1873, was born in Caracas. Alfred Ludwig, born on 26 March 1876, and Alexander Nathan, born on 4 February 1881, were born in Hamburg.

Philip Popert had already acquired Venezuelan citizenship before the marriage, so that the children, including Otto Adolph, also became Venezuelan citizens.

We know from the birthplaces of the children and the registration cards that the family lived in Caracas, Venezuela, until around 1874 and then in Hamburg. According to the Hamburg address book, they lived at Bundesstraße 10 in the 1870s, then at Colonnaden 46. Philipp Popert, who was described in the address book as a pensioner (Rentier) or privateer (someone who lives off his assets) from around 1880, nevertheless held the stock exchange position Pf. 6 B as a broker on the Hamburg stock exchange. There is no record of any stock exchange transactions, whether trading in securities, grain or insurance.

Apparently the family moved back to South America after Otto Adolph Popert's birth. Otto Adolph lived with his parents in Venezuela after his birth until 26 September 1884 and from August 1889 to March 1893. The family returned to Hamburg at the turn of the century and initially lived briefly as subtenants in Schumannstraße in Altona, then at Falkenried 53, in 1902 at Eppendorfer Weg 252 and finally from 1904 at Wrangelstraße 40, where Philipp Popert died on 6 June 1905 and his widow Julchen on 11 February 1907.

Otto Adolph Popert travelled to America again in the 1910s. According to a voter register of the city of Sacramento, California, he took up residence there from 1912 to 1914. We do not know why he returned to Hamburg from the USA and what his mental state was. In any case, on 5 July 1915, Otto Adolph Popert became a patient at the former ‘Friedrichsberg Lunatic Asylum’ and from around 1918 at the ‘Langenhorn State Hospital’ due to an unspecified ‘mental disorder’.

We know nothing more about his life before these institutionalisations, nor about the details of his life in the institutions. A patient file no longer exists.
He was probably unable to manage his own affairs. From 1925, his younger brother Alexander Nathan Popert administered his brother's assets of almost 30,000 RM, which the Popert couple had left to their son Otto Adolph, as his appointed carer.

Jewish patients had already been transported from Langenhorn in September 1940 and murdered in the Brandenburg killing centre. Otto Adolph Popert was spared here.

On 27 November 1941, 32 women and 37 men were transported from the institution, now called the ‘Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home’, to the ‘Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’ near Gnesen. Among them was Otto Adolph Popert.

Located in the former Prussian province of Poznan, the Tiegenhof asylum was built between 1891 and 1894 just two and a half kilometres from Gniezno.

It was one of the psychiatric institutions with the lowest mortality rates in the world. As a result of the First World War, the area became part of the Republic of Poland. The Tiegenhof psychiatric hospital was now called ‘Dziekanka’ and Gnesen became ‘Gniezno’. After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the area around Gniezno was incorporated into the German Reich. In October 1939, the Dziekanka institution was renamed the ‘Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’ and included in the National Socialists' "Euthanasia” programme. In total, more than 200 people were ‘transferred’ from the ‘Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home’ to the ‘Gauheilanstalt Tiegenhof’ in several transports on 14, 20 and 27 November 1941. The Hamburg Euthanasia Memorial Book lists 206 people.
Almost all of them were murdered by starvation and/or the administration of overdoses of drugs such as Luminal, scopolamine and chloral hydrate.

Otto Adolph Popert allegedly died of ‘general physical and circulatory weakness’ on 5 May 1942. It can be assumed with certainty that Otto Adolph Popert did not die of natural causes.
According to the entries in the institution's admission book, his body was buried on 9 May 1942.

The fate of the siblings

Carlota Popert, Otto Adolph's eldest sister, born in Caracas in 1866, married Ludwig Kern, also a Jewish merchant, born on 25 June 1862 in Eschingen near Landau, on 28 August 1890.
This marriage produced five children, Fernando Carlos, born on 5 August 1891 in Hamburg, Eleonore Hermine, born on 3 December 1892 in Hamburg, Bundesstraße 18, Manfred Robert, born on 11 April 1894 in Hamburg, Bundesstraße 18, Emil Friedrich, born on 25 April 1899 in Wandsbek, Minnie Kern, born on 24 August 1907 (place of birth unknown).
All that is known about this family is that they left Germany in time to settle in the USA. Carlota Kern died in 1933, Ludwig Kern in 1948.

Juanita Popert, born in Caracas in 1872, married Leopold Warschauer, also Jewish and resident in London, in Hamburg on 15 September 1896. The couple had four children, Alfred Victor, Frieda, Fritz and Margaret. This family emigrated from Germany in good time and lived in Middlesex, England. We do not know any details about this family.

The brother Fernando Popert, born in Caracas in 1873, died on 7 April 1882 in his parents' flat at An der Verbindungsbahn 8 at the age of eight.

Alfred Ludwig Popert, born in Hamburg in 1876, is said to have died in Kensington, England in 1925.

His brother Alexander Nathan Popert, born in 1881, married the non-Jewish Protestant teacher Elsa Emilie Johanna Bauer, born on 23 January 1890 in Altona, on 24 March 1917 and converted to the Protestant denomination. Their son Alfredo Popert was born on 25 March 1928.
Alexander Nathan Popert worked as an employee in various export and import companies, from 1911 as owner of the company Alejandro Popert, which was entered in the commercial register, and from 1917 as general agent and authorised signatory of the export and import company Oscar Meyer & Co. In 1938, he was forced to leave the company because he was Jewish.
As a foreign citizen, he was interned on 3 November 1942, i.e. arrested and transferred to the Laufen internment camp in Upper Bavaria via the Hütten police prison in Hamburg-Neustadt.
Meanwhile, Elsa Popert and her son Alfredo remained in the flat in Hamburg-Eppendorf, Löwenstrasse 50. Like Alexander Nathan, his wife Elsa and son Alfredo also had Venezuelan citizenship. Protected by this, all three were allowed to leave Germany on 20 January 1945. They travelled via Switzerland and France from Marseille on the Swedish Red Cross ship ‘Gripsholm’ to New York and from there on to Venezuela.

Stand: May 2025
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg (diverse Jahrgänge); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2000 Geburtsregister Nr. 746/1881 (Alexander Nathan Popert), 6262 Geburtsregister Nr. 369/1890 (Elsa Emilie Johanna Bauer), 8913 Geburtsregister Nr. 867/1876 (Alfred Ludwig Popert), 8977 Geburtsregister Nr. 2395/1883 (Otto Adolph Popert), 9065 Geburtsregister Nr. 1065/1891 (Fernando Carlos Kern), 9077 Geburtsregister Nr. 1938/1892 (Eleonore Hermine Kern), 9097 Geburtsregister Nr. 712/1894 (Manfred Robert Kern), 13246 Geburtsregister Nr. 235/1899 (Emil Friedrich Kern), 8546 Heiratsregister Nr. 286/1890 (Ludwig Kern/Carlota Popert), 8578 Heiratsregister Nr. 428/1896 (Leopold Warschauer/Juanita Popert), 9564 Heiratsregister Nr. 82/1917 (Alexander Nathan Popert/Elsa Emilie Johanna Bauer), 7782 Sterberegister Nr. 835/1882 (Fernando Popert), 9657 Sterberegister Nr. 1340/1905 (Philipp Popert), 9669 Sterberegister Nr. 400/1907 (Julchen Popert), 232-1 Vormundschaftsbehörde D 81 Bd 1 und Bd 2 (Otto Adolph Popert), 314_15 Oberfinanzpräsident (Devisenstelle und Vermögensverwertungsstelle) R 1939 Nr. 2146 (Alejandro Nathan Popert), 332-8 Meldewesen (diverse Jahrgänge), 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung 5206 (Alejandro Nathan Popert), 522-01 Jüdische Gemeinde 0992_b Kultussteuerkarten. Standesamt Gnesen Sterberegister Nr. 208/1943 (Otto Adolph Popert). Institut für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin (UKE/IGEM) Hamburg, Archiv, Aufnahmebuch 1915.