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Karl Friedrich Michael * 1910

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, Bronislawa Luise Dorothea Mattersdorf, Lucie Rothschild, Dorothea Dorthy Silberberg, Wilhelm Süsser, Anna Luise (Louise Hedwig) Weimann, Salo Weinberg

Karl Friedrich Michael, born on 24 July 1910 in Mannheim, murdered on 23 Sept. 1940 in the Brandenburg/Havel euthanasia killing center

Without Stolperstein

Karl Friedrich Michael was born on 24 July 1910 in the "Luisenheim” Catholic maternity home in Mannheim. His mother was the unmarried sales assistant Klara Michael from Halle/Saale, the daughter of the building contractor Friedrich Karl Michael. According to the birth certificate of her son, she was of the Protestant faith. It is not clear why Karl Friedrich Michael was assigned to the transport of Jewish women and men to Brandenburg/Havel on 23 Sept. 1940. There is no evidence for his mother’s conversion from Judaism to Protestantism.

We do not know when and for what reason Karl Friedrich Michael took up residence in Hamburg and whether he lived there by himself. In May 1931, he came into conflict with the police when he camped with a group of young people on the meadow of the Bornpark and harassed playing children. The group followed the request of the police officer called in to leave the meadow. Only Karl Friedrich refused. He tried to tear himself away from the police officer who wanted to forcibly remove him and insulted him with offensive language. Only when passers-by calmed Karl Friedrich down, did he follow the officer to the police station. On 21 May 1931, the court sentenced him to "two weeks in prison and two weeks’ detention” for insulting an officer and violating traffic regulations. In handing down the sentence, the court took into account the fact that Karl Friedrich, as an "obvious psychopath,” was to be regarded as having diminished responsibility. It granted a deferral of the sentence until 21 May 1934. Two months after his conviction, in July 1931, Karl Friedrich forfeited this probationary period. He had been apprehended begging and had to assume his sentence on 21 July 1931. After less than a month, on 17 Aug. 1931, he was released again. After that there must have been problems with the police again, because Karl Friedrich was again taken into custody and on 3 Nov. 1931, he was admitted to the Hamburg Langenhorn State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn). Further details about this detention as well as about his stay in Langenhorn are not known.

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 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).

We do not know whether, and if so, when Karl Friedrich Michael’s mother became aware of his death. It was noted on his entry in the birth register that he had died in Cholm on 2 Feb. 1941. The records office Cholm II (General Government [in Poland]) allegedly registered the death on 2 Feb. 1941 under no. 467/1941. However, those murdered in Brandenburg were never in Cholm (Polish: Chelm), a town east of Lublin. 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 Cholm. 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.

An address of Karl Friedrich Michael in Hamburg is not known, so that no individual place can be determined where he could be commemorated with a Stolperstein.

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

© Ingo Wille

Quellen: 1; 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); 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht A10998/31 Karl Friedrich Michael; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn Abl. 1/1995 Aufnahme-/Abgangsbuch Langenhorn 26.8.1939 bis 27.1.1941; Standesamt Mannheim, Geburtsregister Nr. 2744/1910 Karl Friedrich Michael.
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