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Paul Poetzsch, 1938 (Photo Ausmusterungsschein)
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Paul Poetzsch * 1919

Schmachthäger Straße 13 (Hamburg-Nord, Barmbek-Nord)

HIER WOHNTE
PAUL POETZSCH
JG. 1919
EINGEWIESEN 1943
’HEILANSTALT’
WEILMÜNSTER / EICHBERG
1944 ’HEILANSTALT’
HADAMAR
ERMORDET 7.11.1944

Paul Poetzsch, b. 4.24.1919, deported on 8.7. 1943 to Weilmünster/Eichberg, on 10.2.1944 to Hadamar, killed here on 11.7.1944

Schmachthäger Strasse 13

Paul Poetzsch was born in Barmbek on 24 April 1919. His father, Paul, was a bargeman (boat master); whether his mother, Auguste, née Kramer, had an occupation we do not know. The only sources concerning the fate of Paul Poetzsch are the documents held at the Evangelical Institute Alsterdorf. Paul Poetzsch born in his parental home at Gustavstrasse 14 and baptized at St. Katharinen on 20 July 1919. The godparents were his mother and father.

Paul Poetzsch was mentally impaired. In the 1920s, there was already a policy in place for handicapped people consisting of isolation, repudiation, and control; the Nazis radicalized this policy, and toward the end of the 1930s, it was carried forward into murder.

In 1926, at six years of age, Paul Poetzsch’s mother brought him for the first time to the Friedrichsberg state hospital. It was noted that his familial situation included five siblings. His diagnosis was "imbecile" (today he would be classified as mentally impaired). On 20 January 1926, he was admitted to Friedrichsberg.

On the basis of an examination finally carried out on 30 November 1928, Chief Directing Physician Williger of the state youth office mandated at the end of January 1929 "transfer to a Hamburg institution for the mentally ill, idiots, and epileptics” and accordingly his "admission to the Alsterdorf Institute, at the cost of the welfare office, was necessary.” The "main symptom of illness” was given as "feeble-mindedness in high degree (idiotic).”

On 14 July 1933, the National Socialists issued the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring,” the first paragraph of which stated: "Whoever is hereditarily ill can be rendered unfruitful by surgical intervention (sterilization)…” §2 defined those concerned: "The hereditarily ill in the sense of this law are whoever suffer from the following illnesses: 1. Genetic feeble-mindness, 2. Schizophrenia, 3. Cyclical madness (manic depression), 4. Hereditary epilepsy (falling sickness), 5. Hereditary St. Vitus Dance (Huntington’s Chorea), 6. Hereditary blindness, 7. Hereditary deafness, 8. Serious hereditary physical deformation."

The 1934 report of Chief Physician Kreyenberg at Alsterdorf argued clearly in the direction of segregation instead of therapeutic treatment for Paul Poetzsch: "In his behavior he is generally manageable, however, is governed by strong motor agitation, can scarcely sit still, talks continuously, laughs much … but all in all, he must be sterilized … We request sterilization."

On 23 April 1935, a day after Paul Poetzsch’s 16th birthday, the management of the Alsterdorf Institute communicated to his parents "with German greetings, that your son Paul has been scheduled today for a sterilization operation at the University Hospital Eppendorf."

Hamburg’s health and welfare functionaries were proactive in the implementation of the "Hereditary Disease” Law. In all of Germany in 1934, there were 2,860 rulings calling for sterilization; of these, 706 were in Hamburg. Altogether in Hamburg, from 1934 to 1945, 24,260 people were sterilized.

A few months earlier, Paul’s parents had brought him home, after he had spent five and one half years (until 25 November 1934) at Alsterdorf.

Perhaps, this was in response to a complaint by his father, which is noted in a memorandum of 23 July 1933: "Paul Pötzsch’s father came to office hours quite agitated! He had fetched his son home for a furlough about an hour ago; when his wife wanted to change his clothes, he was discovered to have extensive welts all over his body. They were found on the boy’s buttocks, arm, and back, clearly produced by a blunt object; the long, large welts are yellow-green in color; those on the buttocks show signs of bleeding beneath the skin. The immediate investigation I instituted, in which Ins. Hülsen participated, resulted in a vigorous denial by the caregivers, Lauermann and Petersen, that they had struck the boy. Herr Lauermann said, to the contrary, that the bruises probably could have resulted from the mutual blows with wooden scoops the pupils exchanged while at play in the sandbox. The father was assured that from now on supervision of the sandbox would be carried out more scrupulously, …”

In addition, the "the management" wrote to the father on 4 August: "With reference to your oral complaint, we inform you most courteously that the bruises on your son Paul’s body were noted by his caregivers during the morning bath and were reported to the physician. However, that the bruises originated from the caregivers is decisively denied by the responsible caregiving authorities and is also on the face of it highly improbable, since Paul is a friendly, trusting boy whom the caregivers are fond of …"

The documents concerning Paul Poetzsch affirm that he went home on furlough several times a year. In his report for 1934, Kreyenberg judged: "There is nothing to object to in a release for this harmless imbecile into an orderly domestic situation." He had already ordered sterilization, which was his only medical concern.

On 29 March 1935, Paul Poetzsch was sent for a second time to Alsterdorf and again admitted there on 9 April 1935. The basis for the committal by the health and welfare functionaries read: "Continued stay at the home of the parents is not possible because of the unfavorable influence of the rest of his siblings.”

Apparently, the Poetzsch family had been put under pressure. In the document register of the Alsterdorf Institute which itemized the complete correspondences, reports, as well as the furloughs up to 7 April 1936, there is this entry on 27 November 1934:

The father has been asked for information about why P. has not returned from furlough.
11.29.1934 Father’s letter applying for discharge.
12.10.1934 Communication to father with regard to the delivery of his son.
12.11.1934 Physician’s report.
12.31.1934 Certification that P.P. was discharged on 11.25.1934.
2.20.1935 Notification of discharge to welfare office
3.29.1935 Referral to welfare office
3.29.1935 Welfare office assumes costs until 4.30.1936
4.9.1935 Physician’s report
4.9.1935 P.P. is housed in Group II

The father wrote to the Alsterdorf management on 29 November 1934: "Last Sunday, I inquired in the office whether there was anything to prevent me from keeping the boy home once and for all. I was told that there was nothing to prevent this, but that I would have to apply to the welfare office on Rentzelstrasse.” He was still waiting for an answer; when he had still not received an answer by 5 December 1934, he "temporarily” brought his son again to Alsterdorf.

We do not know, what exactly transpired between December 1934 and March 1935. We can only imagine, however, what it was like for an eight-member dockworker’s family to live under unbelievably harsh conditions with a mentally impaired son and to do right by him – and to try to do this without any sort of aid or advocacy, but on the contrary burdened by the stigma of exclusion and persecution.

In a 1936 report by the Alsterdorf Chief Physician Kreyenberg makes clear by what criteria the patients were judged: their capacity to work and the easiness of the care they required. Just a few years later this measure of value decided the patients‘ further existence. Kreyenberg passed judgement on Paul Poetzsch: "he is of no use for any regular employment”; he is "compliant and affords no difficulties.”

Not much more about Paul Poetzsch’s life is to be learned from the records. In 1938, the state welfare office disclosed that Kreyenberg had acknowledged the necessity of Paul Poetzsch to receive institutional care until August 1943.

Also in the records is his exemption from military service submitted by the district military commander on 6 September 1938, which judged Paul Poetzsch to be: "completely unfit for service in the armed forces. He is withdrawn from the obligation to serve.”

At the end of the 1930s, the singling out of the handicapped and of aged people incapable of work took on deadly dimensions. For effective processing, so-called reporting forms were sent out from Berlin to all institutions, in order to record patients incapable of work and those who were problematical. The Ministry of the Interior had created various front organizations, for example, the so-called T4, named for its address at Tiergartenstrasse 4, and the GeKraT, the Charitable Sick People’s Transport Society, which carried out the deportations. In 1941, the Director of the Alsterdorf Institute, Pastor Friedrich Lensch, according to his own trial testimony in 1973, sent 465 filled out reporting forms to Berlin. From 1941 to 1944, 629 patients were deported from Alsterdorf, 378 of them on the basis of the reporting form. At the end of 1945, 508 deaths were to be mourned.

Paul Poetzsch remained at Alsterdorf until August 1943. His family lived at that time at Schmachthägerstraße 13, third floor, at the border between Barmbekand Steilshoop.

On 7 August 1943, Paul Poetzsch was transported from Alsterdorf. The relocation was at the request of Pastor Lensch, who justified it by the air attacks on Hamburg and their serious impact on space shortages at the Alsterdorf Institute. Paul Poetzsch’s records state: "exited 8.7.1943, relocated to Weilmünster"; on another page it says: "8.7.1943 Eichberg.” On 10.2.1944 he was deported from there to Hadamar and killed on 11.7.1944.

With the aid of patient records from the Langenhorn psychiatric hospital of Hamburg, it can be reckoned that no patient deported to Hadamar remained alive for more than a few weeks. In Paul Poetzsch’s case, the Hadamar patient list reports the cause of death as pleurisy and his burial place as the institution’s cemetery.

They did not even make an effort to enter his dates correctly: his birthdate was given as 4.20.1920, his religion as "kt” (Catholic).

Paul Poetzsch was killed when he was 25. His birthdate was 24 April 1919, and he was baptized as a Protestant in that year.


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

Stand: February 2018
© Ulrike Hoppe

Quellen: Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Sonderakte 124, Paul Poetzsch; Angelika Ebbinghaus/Heidrun Kaupen-Haas/Karl Heinz Roth (Hrsg.), Heilen und Vernichten im Mustergau Hamburg, Hamburg 1984 (darin: Friedemann Pfäfflin, Zwangssterilisation in Hamburg; Andrea Brücks/Christine Rothmaler, "In dubio pro Volksgemeinschaft"; Dieter Kuhlbrodt, "Verlegt nach … und getötet"); Michael Wunder/Ingrid Genkel/Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr (Hrsg. Vorstand der Alsterdorfer Anstalten Pastor Rudi Mondry), Hamburg 1987.