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Bronislawa Luise Dorothea Mattersdorf * 1899

ohne Hamburger Adresse

ermordet am 23.9.1940 in der Tötungsanstalt Brandenburg an der Havel

further stumbling stones in ohne Hamburger Adresse :
Dr. Hans Bloch, Felix Cohn, Moraka Farbstein, Erland Walter Friedmann, Richard Guth, Martha Havelland, Albert Hirsch, Auguste Hirschkowitz, Sophie Kasarnowsky, Ernestine Levy, Richard Levy, Hannchen Lewin, Karl Friedrich Michael, Lucie Rothschild, Dorothea Dorthy Silberberg, Wilhelm Süsser, Anna Luise (Louise Hedwig) Weimann, Salo Weinberg

Bronislawa Luise Dorothea Mattersdorf, born on 11 Feb. 1899 in Berlin, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Without Stolperstein

Luise Mattersdorf was born on 11 Feb. 1899 in Berlin at Friedrichstrasse 106, as the daughter of the lawyer Franz August Mattersdorf, born on 29 Sept. 1863 in Breslau (today Wroclaw in Poland), and Gitel, née Natansohn. Luise’s parents were of the Jewish faith. With respect to Luise Mattersdorf’s life story, no information is available about her childhood, her youth, and the reasons for her admission to a psychiatric institution. Her mother probably died at the beginning of the twentieth century, because on 19 Dec. 1916, Franz August Mattersdorf, by then holding the title Counselor of Justice (Justizrat), married the general manager Selma Michaelis, born on 31 Mar. 1864 in Berlin.

In the 1930s, Luise Mattersdorf resided in the "private institution of Miss Clausen” ("Privatanstalt Fräulein Clausen”) in Friedrichsfeld in the municipality of Prinzenmoor near Rendsburg. Luise Mattersdorf is listed in Friedrichsfeld’s registration list without giving the exact admission date.

In 1883, a private "institution for ladies with nervous and emotional disorders” was built on the site of a former glassworks. The residents maintained the park around the main building and tended the extensive fruit and vegetable garden. The patients mostly came from "more refined” families, who could afford the upscale accommodation. A passage in a brochure of the institution stated, "The Friedrichsfeld estate, not far from the Eider, offers a quiet and healthy stay to ladies who are suffering from nervous and emotional disorders and do not want to go to a large institution but nevertheless cannot stay with their family.” Between 1910 and 1942, the two sisters Margarethe and Cäcilie Clausen managed their institution, whose capacity was limited to about 35 residents. The relatives of the unmarried Luise Mattersdorf were apparently able to bear the costs for this upscale accommodation.

On 18 Sept. 1940, Luise Mattersdorf was transferred to the Hamburg-Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt” Hamburg-Langenhorn). This transfer was preceded by the following developments:

In the spring/summer of 1940, the "euthanasia” headquarters in Berlin, located at Tiergartenstrasse 4, planned a special operation aimed against Jews in public and private sanatoriums and nursing homes. It had the Jewish persons living in the institutions registered and moved together in what were officially so-called collection institutions. The Hamburg-Langenhorn "sanatorium and nursing home” ("Heil- und Pflegeanstalt” Hamburg-Langenhorn) was designated the North German collection institution. All institutions in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg were ordered to move the Jews living in their facilities there by 18 Sept. 1940.

After all Jewish patients from the North German institutions had arrived in Langenhorn, they were taken to Brandenburg/Havel on 23 Sept. 1940, together with the Jewish patients who had lived there for some time, on a transport comprised of 136 persons overall. On the same day, they were killed with carbon monoxide in the part of the former penitentiary converted into a gas-killing facility. Only one patient, Ilse Herta Zachmann, escaped this fate at first (see corresponding entry).

It is not known whether, and if so, when relatives became aware of Luise Mattersdorf’s death. In all documented death notices, it was claimed that the person concerned had died in Chelm (Polish) or Cholm (German), a town east of Lublin. Those murdered in Brandenburg, however, were never in Chelm/Cholm. The former Polish sanatorium there no longer existed after SS units had murdered almost all patients on 12 Jan. 1940. Also, there was no German records office in Chelm. Its fabrication and the use of postdated dates of death served to disguise the killing operation and at the same time enabled the authorities to claim higher care expenses for periods extended accordingly.

Luise Mattersdorf’s father Franz August also perished in the Holocaust. He was deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt on 24 Sept. 1942 and died there on 4 Oct. 1942. His second wife had already died at the end of the 1930s.

For Luise Mattersdorf, no personal address is known in Hamburg, so that no individual place can be determined where she could be commemorated with a Stolperstein.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 3; 5; StaH 133-1 III Staatsarchiv III, 3171-2/4 U.A. 4, Liste psychisch kranker jüdischer Patientinnen und Patienten der psychiatrischen Anstalt Langenhorn, die aufgrund nationalsozialistischer "Euthanasie"-Maßnahmen ermordet wurden, zusammengestellt von Peter von Rönn, Hamburg (Projektgruppe zur Erforschung des Schicksals psychisch Kranker in Langenhorn); 352-3 Medizinalkollegium I H 13 Friedrichsfeld 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.1939 bis 27.1.1941 Landesarchiv Berlin, Geburtsregister Nr. 257/1899 Luise Mattersdorf, Nr. 399/1916 Heiratsregistereintrag Franz August Mattersdorf/Selma Michaelis; Gemeinde Prinzenmoor, Melderegisterauszug Friedrichsmoor 1931–1933; JSHD Forschungsgruppe "Juden in Schleswig-Holstein", Datenpool Erich Koch, Schleswig. Rust, Jürgen (Red.), Prinzenmoor in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Prinzenmoor 2008, S. 124ff.
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