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Wilhelmine Posselt
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Wilhelmine Posselt * 1874

Simon-von-Utrecht-Straße 76 (Hamburg-Mitte, St. Pauli)

HIER WOHNTE
WILHELMINE POSSELT
JG. 1874
EINGEWIESEN 1890
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
‚VERLEGT‘ 16.8.1943
HEILANSTALT
AM STEINHOF / WIEN
ERMORDET 5.3.1944

Wilhelmine (Minna) Posselt, born on 22.9.1874 in Hamburg, admitted on 14.10.1890 to the former Alsterdorfer Anstalten (today Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf), deported to Vienna on 16.8.1943 to the ‘Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien’, died there on 5.3.1944

Simon-von-Utrecht-Straße 76 (formerly Eckernförder Straße 76)

Marie Johanne Wilhelmine (callname Wilhelmine, called Minna) Posselt was born in Hamburg on 22 September 1874, as the eldest daughter of Karl Gotthelf August Posselt and Dorothea, née Knolle. Her father was born in 1831 in Hartau, today a district of Zittau in south-east Saxony. He professed the Evangelical Lutheran denomination. In the 1870s, he gave his profession as a carpenter, later he described himself as a worker. Minna Posselt's mother was born on 11 February 1846 in Hildesheim. She belonged to the Catholic Church.

At the time of the birth of Minna's younger sister Johanne Marie, born on 9 April 1877, the Posselt couple lived at Hohlerweg 17, a street in the former Hamburg Gängeviertel (today part of the Michelwiese below the main church of St. Michaelis). She was followed by her youngest sister Sophie Dorothea on 31 January 1880. At this time, the family lived at Paradieshof 3, a very narrow passageway between today's Michaelisstraße and Alter Steinweg in the Gängeviertel neighbourhood. The living conditions in Hohlerweg and Paradieshof were not ‘paradisiacal’. They were slums.

In 1881, the family lived in Hartau. Minna Posselt was baptised Catholic in Zittau on 6 January 1881 and attended school in Hartau from Easter 1881.

During this time, Minna's father was not with his family, but in Hamburg. We do not know the reasons for this. He died on 22 April 1881 in his home at Paradieshof 3.

After six years of attendance, Minna Posselt was dismissed from the school in Hartau on 12 April 1889. Her performance was assessed as ‘barely adequate’. She was dismissed from school ‘due to confirmation’, as the dismissal certificate stated. The necessary Protestant baptism took place two days later on 14 April 1889 in Zittau. We do not know the reason for the change of denomination.

Dorothea Posselt returned to Hamburg with her daughters in 1889 or 1890. She found a sublet in what was then Eckernförderstraße 76 in the St Pauli district (today Simon-von-Utrecht-Straße).

In October 1890, the public health officer C. W. Reinhard drew up an expert opinion for the General Institute for the Poor (Allgemeine Armenanstalt) regarding the possible admission of Minna Posselt to the Alsterdorf asylum (now the Alsterdorf Protestant Foundation/Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf). He came to the conclusion that Minna was ‘highly feeble-minded’. It would be best to place her in an ‘institution for idiots’, for example in the Alsterdorf asylum. He argued that sixteen-year-old Minna looked like a ten or eleven-year-old girl and was mentally at a very low level. She could not read and could only solve simple addition problems in the number range up to ten. (‘feeble minded‘ and ‘idiocy’ are terms no longer used today for a moderate mental disability or a severe form of intellectual disability).

On 14 October 1890, Minna Posselt was admitted from the General Institute for the Poor to what was then the Alsterdorf Asylum.

The patient file is only incomplete. Reports from many years are missing. For 1900 and 1901, it is noted that Minna Posselt did light housework and could ‘knit properly’. Her indistinct speech was barely understandable. Her character was described as good-natured and docile.

Minna Posselt often received visits from her mother and her sister Johanne Sophie, who had married in 1896 and now bore the surname Martens.

In 1908, Minna Posselt spent several times ‘recuperating‘ in the hospital. No reason was given for the need for recuperation. In 1912, she was ‘in the hospital because of excitement’. Her work performance declined over the years and she is said to have become ‘quarrelsome’. In the following years, she was able to do housework.

In the 1930s, it was reported that Minna Posselt tried to attract the attention of visitors during visiting hours by ‘shouting loudly, telling robbery stories or puffing up trivialities’. She was not nice in her dealings with her ‘fellow pupils’, was ‘false, spiteful and lied with great cheek’. Her work performance was poor. She was loyal and conscientious, took care of her own personal hygiene and kept her clothes clean and tidy. A few months later it was said: "She is very agitated, quarrelsome and cries at the slightest thing. She likes to play the badly offended and never understood."

In 1937, it was noted that Minna Posselt was unable to speak. Her facial nerve was said to have been paralysed, so that her facial expressions were impaired. Her right arm was said to have hung limply until it was finally paralysed. In 1940, she suffered a stroke, which further impaired her movements.

In February 1943, according to the patient file, she became a ‘patient who had to be completely cared for’. She had to be guided when walking. On the one hand, she was considered calm and modest, but on the other hand she was also very agitated as soon as she felt irritated by something.

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 Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home were ‘transferred’ to the ‘Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien’ (also known as the ‘Am Steinhof’ institution) in Vienna on one of these transports. Minna Posselt was among them.

Even when she was admitted to the institution in Vienna, Minna Posselt could only speak with great difficulty. She could neither read nor write. Her former poor arithmetic skills had been lost. Her right arm and leg were still partially paralysed, so that she could only walk with support. She was also diagnosed with strabismus (crossed eyes). The doctors also suspected damage to the central nervous system.

At the end of September 1943, the diagnosis was ‘imbecility with cerebrovascular calcification’. Shortly afterwards, Minna Posselt was judged to be a ‘very frail patient’.
(Imbecility is no longer a common term for moderate mental disability).

Sister Johanne Martens learnt that Minna Posselt was in a "precarious condition" due to an "intestinal upset". However, this had improved again in November. Minna Posselt also suffered from diarrhoea at times at the beginning of 1944. According to her medical report, she ate very little food. In January 1944, she weighed only 32 kg.

Minna Posselt died on 5 March 1944, allegedly from cerebrovascular calcification, pneumonia and intestinal inflammation. She became 69 years old.

During the first phase of Nazi "Euthanasia" from October 1939 to August 1941, the institution in Vienna was an intermediate institution for the Hartheim killing centre near Linz. After the official end of the murders in the killing centres, murders continued in previous intermediate institutions, including the Vienna institution itself: through overdoses of medication and non-treatment of illness, but above all through food deprivation. By the end of 1945, 257 of the 300 girls and women from Hamburg had lost their lives, 196 of them from Alsterdorf.

Stand: June 2025
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: Adressbuch Hamburg (mehrere Jahrgänge); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1906 Geburtsregister Nr. 1817/1877 (Johanne Marie Posselt), 1974 Geburtsregister Nr. (Sophie Dorothea Posselt), 2869 Heiratsregister Nr. 777/1896 (Johanne Marie Posselt/Johannes Heinrich Friedrich Martens), 104 Sterberegister Nr. 1192/1881 (Carl Gotthelf Posselt), 5345 Sterberegister Nr. 69/1922 (Dorothea Posselt); Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Sonderakte V 131 (Minna Posselt). 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.