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Wilhelm Münster * 1926

Im Holderstrauch 6 (Eimsbüttel, Schnelsen)

HIER WOHNTE
WILHELM MÜNSTER
JG. 1926
EINGEWIESEN 1938
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
´VERLEGT‘ 27.11.1941
´HEILANSTALT` TIEGENHOF
ERMORDET 4.4.1942

Wilhelm Münster, born in Hamburg on 28.7.1926, admitted to the ‚Alsterdorf Asylum‘ (‘Alsterdorfer Anstalten‘, now ‘Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf‘) on 19.7.1938, ‘transferred’ to the ‚Sanatorium and Nursing Home Hamburg-Langenhorn’ on 28.7.1941, ‚transferred’ to the ‚Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’ (Polish: Dziekanka) near Gnesen (Polish: Gniezno) on 27.11.1941, murdered there on 4.4.1942

Im Holderstrauch 6 (Schnelsen)

Wilhelm Münster was born in Hamburg on 28 July 1926. His parents were Erna Baumgart, née Münster, born on 2 August 1899 and Wilhelm Ziemann, a barber by profession (shaves or trims beards). We do not know the date of his birth. Erna Baumgart and Wilhelm Ziemann were not married. Wilhelm Münster's mother later married a man named Baumgart. We do not know anything more about him either.

Wilhelm Münster probably grew up with his maternal grandparents. His last address before being admitted to what was then the Alsterdorf Asylum (now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) was the same as that of his grandparents, Im Holderstrauch 6 in Schnelsen. His grandparents were Carl Friedrich Isidor Münster, born on 11 October 1862 in the then still independent Prussian town of Altona, and Johanna Münster, née Ackermann, born on 30 December 1874 in Altona. They married on 1 May 1897. Carl Münster was head postmaster. Carl and Johanna Münster had three daughters from their marriage: Erna, married name Baumgart, the mother of Wilhelm Münster, a girl who died at the age of 17 and whose date of birth and name are unknown to us, and Erna Hedwig, married name Maier, born on 8 April 1907.

Wilhelm Münster was admitted to the Alsterdorfer Asylum on 19 July 1938. His medical records are no longer available. The few other dates of his life are taken from the admission book of the Alsterdorf Asylum and a so-called hereditary health card, which was created for the Hamburg health passport archive established from 1934 onwards for the purpose of ‚hereditary biological inventory‘ of the population.

The diagnosis was ‚erectile imbecility’ (imbecility is an outdated, derogatory term for moderate intellectual disability). Regarding the course of the illness, it is said that Wilhelm Münster was an ‚incurably ill, low-lying patient who had few relationships with his environment. He did not pose any great difficulties in terms of care, as he was able to dress and undress himself and attended to his needs during the day without being asked. He was not able to work.’ What is striking about the date of his admission is that his grandmother had died two days earlier. It is possible that the grandfather did not feel able to look after his twelve-year-old grandson on his own.

Wilhelm Münster lived in the Alsterdorf Asylum for three years until he was initially transferred to the ‘Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home’ on 28 July 1941, together with at least 49 other men. 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), a sub-organisation of the ‘euthanasia’ centre in Berlin.

Michael Wunder, who has researched the history of the murdered Alsterdorf patients, pointed out that the transports, which mainly consisted of particularly weak people who were unable to work, had been compiled according to the registration forms sent to the ‘euthanasia’ centre at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. Pastor Lensch, then head of the Alsterdorf Asylum and a member of the SA, had then received a corresponding list of transport participants from the Hamburg health authorities. Health Senator Ofterdinger had assured him that it was merely a transfer to relieve the Alsterdorf Asylum and to 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 Alsterdorfer Asylum. Due to the church protests against euthanasia, which had reached their peak throughout the Reich at this time, and information from institutions in southern and eastern Germany, the killing operations were also well known among the carers at the Alsterdorf Asylum and, through them, to some of the inmates. Lensch therefore wrote a circular to all carers in which he described the removal as an ‘administrative act’ that had ‘nothing to do with other measures’. The nursing staff had to acknowledge receipt of this circular.

Despite his assurances, four months later Wilhelm Münster and other men and women from Langenhorn were transferred to the Tiegenhof (Dziekanka) ‘Gau-Heilanstalt’ near Gnesen (Gniezno). The Hamburg Euthanasia Memorial Book contains the names of 66 former Alsterdorf patients who were taken to Tiegenhof on this transport. (Four of the total of 70 Alsterdorf patients had died in Langenhorn before the transport). In total, more than 200 people were transported from the Langenhorn ‘sanatorium and nursing home’ to the ‘Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’ in several transports between 26 September and 27 November 1941. The Hamburg Euthanasia Memorial Book lists 206 people.

The Dziekanka psychiatric hospital near Gniezno had been occupied by the German Wehrmacht in October 1939 and was given the name ‘Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof’. By the summer/autumn of 1941, the German occupiers had murdered the Polish patients there in several operations. When the Hamburgers arrived at Tiegenhof, they too met the same fate. They were killed through systematic starvation, overdoses of medication and neglect.
There were separate killing rooms in the Tiegenhof accommodation centres, where the defenceless and exhausted victims were injected with lethal drugs, injected or dissolved in soup.

Wilhelm Münster lived in the Tiegenhof institution for only four months, dying on 4 April 1942 at the age of 15.

Translation: Ingo Wille
Stand: May 2025
© Karin Gutjahr

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg 1939; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 5899 Heiratsregister Nr. 345/1897 (Carl Friedrich Isidor Münster/Johanna Marie Auguste Ackermann), 7209 Sterberegister Nr. 604/1938 (Johanna Marie Auguste Münster); Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf Archiv, Erbgesundheitskarteikarte (Wilhelm Münster); Zdzisław Jaroszewski (Hrsg.), Die Ermordung der Geisteskranken in Polen 1939-1945, Warschau 1993, S. 86-102. Enno Schwanke, Die Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Tiegenhof – Die nationalsozialistische Euthanasie in Polen während des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Ffm. 2025. Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 269 ff.