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Gebhard Pribbernow im Garten, ca. 1943
© Privatbesitz

Gebhard Pribbernow * 1940

Marckmannstraße 135 (ehemalige Kinderklinik) (Hamburg-Mitte, Rothenburgsort)

GEBHARD PRIBBERNOW
GEB. 21.1.1940
ERMORDET 4.7.1944

further stumbling stones in Marckmannstraße 135 (ehemalige Kinderklinik):
Andreas Ahlemann, Rita Ahrens, Ursula Bade, Hermann Beekhuis, Ute Conrad, Helga Deede, Jürgen Dobbert, Anneliese Drost, Siegfried Findelkind, Rolf Förster, Volker Grimm, Antje Hinrichs, Lisa Huesmann, Gundula Johns, Peter Löding, Angela Lucassen, Elfriede Maaker, Renate Müller, Werner Nohr, Harald Noll, Agnes Petersen, Renate Pöhls, Hannelore Scholz, Doris Schreiber, Ilse Angelika Schultz, Dagmar Schulz, Magdalene Schütte, Gretel Schwieger, Brunhild Stobbe, Hans Tammling, Peter Timm, Heinz Weidenhausen, Renate Wilken, Horst Willhöft

Rothenburgsort Children's Hospital

In the former Rothenburgsort Children's Hospital, the National Socialists implemented their "euthanasia program" from the early 1940s.
Hildegard Thevs was able to research 33 names of murdered children.

A plaque on the building has commemorated the more than 50 murdered babies and children since 1999:

In this building
between 1941 and 1945
more than 50 handicapped children were killed.
An expert committee classified them
as "unworthy life" and assigned them
to be killed in specialized children's wards.
The Hamburg health administration
was involved in this.
Hamburg medical officers supervised
the admission and killing of the children.
Doctors of the children's hospital
carried them out.
None of those involved
was prosecuted for this.


Further information (in German) on the Internet at:

35 Stolpersteine für Rothenburgsort – Hamburger Abendblatt 10.10.2009

Stolpersteine für ermordete Kinder – ND 10.10.2009

Stolpersteine gegen das Vergessen – Pressestelle des Senats 09.10.2009

Die toten Kinder von Rothenburgsort – Nordelbien.de 09.10.2009

35 Stolpersteine verlegt – Hamburg 1 mit Video 09.10.2009

Wikipedia - Institut für Hygiene und Umwelt

Gedenken an mehr als 50 ermordete Kinder - Die Welt 10.11.1999

Euthanasie-Opfer der Nazis - Beitrag NDR Fernsehen 29.05.2010

Hitler und das "lebensunwerte Leben" - Andreas Schlebach NDR 24.08.2009
©

Gebhard Pribbernow, b. 1.21.1940 in Schwarmitz/County Grünberg/Silesia. Death on 7.4.1944

Gebhard was born in Schwarmitz on 21 January 1940, the first child of the married couple Pribbernow. His mother Edith, née Scheffler, came from there; her husband Fritz came from Meesow in Pomerania. Edith Pribbernow grew up as an orphan with an uncle. At 17 years, she married an older professional soldier, Fritz Pribbernow, and brought Gebhard into the world a little before she was 18. There were complications with the birth. Gebhard’s breathing and heart activity faltered, but with hot and cold baths, and short, sharp blows with a wet cloth they could be brought back into rhythm.

The couple were Lutherans and had their son baptized. When the father, a warrant officer, second class, was transferred to Hamburg-Rahlstedt, the family moved to an apartment at Rahlstedter Weg 67. Thus Gebhard came under the jurisdiction of the "Specialized Children’s Department” in the former hospital for children in Hamburg-Rohenburgsort. The family was living there when the boy, aged fifteen months, had his first smallpox vaccination. Beyond this, nothing more is known about his first months of life.

When Gebhard was two years old, a sister was born who was healthy. Apparently, the father took part in the Second World War from 1939 on and was wounded several times. Therefore, he was absent most of the time. Gebhard’s development proceeded irregularly; his sister overtook him. In his four years of life, he learned neither to sit up on his own nor to feed himself with solid food.

These developmental abnormalities proceeded for three and a half year without a report being made to the comittee "Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung erb- und anlagebedingter schwerer Leiden" in Berlin”. Who initiated his evaluation after admission to the Alsterdorf Institute we do not know. Apparently, the procedure was a replacement for the lack of periodic observations since the summer of 1943 at the "Specialized Children’s Department” in Hamburg. The divorce of the parents may have played a role in the evaluation, because they could not concern themselves with the boy as before.

Two days after Gebhard’s admission, on 6 November 1943, the directing physician, Gerhard Kreyenberg, stated on the basis of a previous examination: "on the grounds of imbecility and microcephaly, Gebhard Pribbernow’s admission to the Alsterdorf Institute is necessary.” Gebhard’s head was smaller than his age would indicate; his arm and leg muscles were so knotted that he could neither grip anything nor move himself forward; and his speech consisted of a few sounds the doctor could not understand. He made a cheerful impression on Kreyenberg and seemed to feel good.

Gebhard’s mother considered taking her son home but was hindered by his father who referred to inadequate housing conditions. Six weeks after Gebhard had come to the hospital, a form arrived from the Wandsbek Health Department concerning the "reporting of malformed infants,” which was not included in the reporting forms of the Reich Commission [for Scientific Investigation of Severe Hereditary and Congenital Diseases, Berlin]. Kreyenberg filled it out, only after a warning, on 12 January 1944. In February 1944, three months after the admission of her son, Gebhard’s mother furnished particulars concerning the hereditary health of the family tree.

There is only slight information concerning the health and behavior of Gebhard during his eight-month stay at Alsterdorf. The care personnel affirmed that he did not know what to do with toys, but enjoyed crumpling newspaper, did not respond to his name, but would laugh when dandled.

The correspondence regarding the assumption of the costs of care, on the other hand, is extensive. It offers insight into the ways of the administration: at first, his father paid the costs of accommodations for Gebhard; the Special Office of Social Administration refused to assume the costs because there existed no "need of legally mandated welfare,” but then did assume the costs, probably because the report on the child had reached the Health Department.

Four months later, on 18 May 1944, Medical Officer Heinrich Maintz of the Hamburg-Wandsbek Department of Health informed the Institute directors: "The Reich Commission for Scientific Investigation of Severe Hereditary and Congenital Diseases, Berlin … has mandated that the above-named child should be transferred to the Rothenburgsort Children’s Hospital.” The Commission’s original target group had been children who had completed their third year of life, but had for some time begun to include older children. Gebhard was in the meantime four years and five months old. His transfer was delayed because he was seriously ill with a severe intestinal disorder. His father received unlimited visiting permission.

On 28 June 1944, Gebhard was admitted to the Rothenburgsort Children’s Hospital and brought to the surgery ward. His father received notification two days later. The ward physician Lotte Albers’ examination records confirmed Kreyenberg’s diagnosis and added that Gebhard would "fix” upon the person who addressed him (that is, he looked at his opposite). Meanwhile, Gebhard had developed bronchitis. Why, with these syndromes, he was put in the surgery ward and remained there, is not revealed in the documents. The bronchitis worsened, and toward morning of 4 July 1944, Gebhard died of pneumonia, whether or not by a lethal injection remains undetermined, although there exists Lotte Albers’ statement to that effect against the ward nurse Martha Müller.

His father reported the death of his son three days later at the Billbrook registry office, which replaced the destroyed Rothenburgsort office. The causes of death read "pneumonia, imbecility.”

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2022
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: Archiv der Ev. Stiftung Alsterdorf, V 272; StaH 213-12 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – NSG, 0017/001, 0017/002; 332-5 Standesämter, 1237+403/1944; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn, Abl. 2000/01, 63 UA 4; Wunder, Kreyenberg ; freundliche Mitteilungen von Angehörigen.