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Gerd Schulze im Alter von dreieinhalb Jahren in den "Alsterdorfer Anstalten"
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Gerd Schulze * 1939

Hartmannsau 4 (Hamburg-Nord, Langenhorn)

HIER WOHNTE
GERD SCHULZE
JG. 1939
EINGEWIESEN 1942
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 7.8.1943
IDSTEIN / KALMENHOF
"KINDERFACHABTEILUNG"
ERMORDET 16.9.1943

Gerd Schulze, born on 16.6.1939 in Hamburg, admitted to the former Alsterdorfer Institutions on 27.8.1942, "transferred” to the "Curative Education Institution Kalmenhof” in Idstein on 7.8.1943, murdered there on 16.9.1943

Hartmannsaue 4 (Langenhorn)

Gerd Schulze`s parents, Gerda nee Lipper and Karl Schulze, had married in 1934. Their first son, Peter, was born in Hamburg in July 1937. Their second son was to arrive into the world in good circumstances. They had decided on the private clinic at Erdkampsweg 110. The 28 years old Gerda Schulze went there shortly before she was due to give birth. After two days, the Fuhlsbüttel physician, Dr. Wiese, discovered that the child was lying upside down. He transferred the mother to the clinic for women Finkenau. There, a frontal position was diagnosed. It was a difficult birth.

Gerd Friedrich Wilhelm Schulze was brought into the world by means of forceps on June 16, 1939. He had suffered a lot from this and started having spasms. There were problems in feeding and this was added to by an infantile eczema so that Gerd was admitted to the Eppendorfer Clinic for treatment from September to November 1939 and again from January to March 1940. Despite his discharge as "improved”, no substantial progress resulted. The parents sought help from a homeopath. The boy’s appetite improved though the eczema worsened. His father wanted to leave no stone unturned and took Gerd to the Rothenburgsort Children's Hospital for private treatment with Dr Wilhelm Bayer. Gerd stayed there from January to the beginning of April 1941. He was shifted from "artificial nutrition” to full cream milk and natural products and the eczema receded almost completely. However, his temporary resistance to food intake did not diminish. On the contrary, after his discharge it intensified and the eczema broke out again. His parents brought him to Rothenburgsort for treatment again from the end of April till June 1941. After this, his father continued to ask for advice there. The treatment with a thyroid preparation was unsuccessful.

The subsequent development of Gerd’s illness was later described by his father as follows in the file of the "Alsterdorfer Insitutions” ("Alsterdorfer Anstalten”, now "Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf”): "After his discharge (partial destruction of the hospital through bombing), we cared for the boy until the present with everything that parents can do for a child. The eczema disappeared completely but the intermittent refusal to eat remained. Despite good milk feeds, fruit and fruit juices in the periods when the child ate with appetite, and even when force was used by continuously offering the food energetically, the weight gain remained disproportionate to the food intake. From time to time I sought advice from Dr Beier [Bayer, M.L.]. Finally, Dr B. prescribed a thyroid preparation to help Gerd mentally, but this was also unsuccessful, neither for better nor for worse."

In February 1942, Gerd’s younger brother Horst was born. In mid-August 1942, the parents heard for the first time during a weight check with the public health officer, Dr Gilsing, in Langenhorn that Gerd was suffering from a "nervous disturbance”. His father then consulted Dr Röper at his practice in Alsterterrasse, who diagnosed Gerd with "feeblemindedness”. In order to get a final confirmation, Karl Schulze turned to Dr Schäfer in the "Alsterdorfer Institutions” on August 22, 1942. Two days later on August 24, 1942, he asked for his son to be admitted there "for examination and observation”. Gilsing’s transfer note read: "The child has been transferred to the Alsterdorfer Institutions for observation on account of imbecility”.

On August 27, 1942, Gerd Schulze was admitted to the "Alsterdorfer Institutions” with the medical dossier from senior physician deputising Dr Schäfer and the diagnosis: "e.g. spastic underdevelopment of the lower extremities imbecillity” Some weeks later (Gerd had been transferred to Department 10), Dr Kreyenberg recorded on September 15, 1942: "[…] is a quiet and friendly child, cannot speak but looks around very attentively, he occupies himself with toys, receives a normal diet, has to be fed, bread he eats unaided […]”. In the period following this were the only things recorded relative to Gerds development and treatment, the only record of Gerd's development and treatment is that he was suspected of having scarlet fever for a time and had chickenpox.

Just under a year after his admission, according to an entry in the records made by Dr Kreyenberg dated August 6, 1943, Gerd was "transferred as the Alsterdorfer Institutions have been destroyed”. This harmless sounding phrase meant the death sentence for Gerd Schulze. He was transported from the freight station in Ochsenzoll to Limburg on August 7, 1943 together with 127 men and children from the "Alsterdorfer Institutions” and 82 male patients from the "Nursing and Care Institution” Langenhorn. There, in the night from August 7, to 8, the wagons with 52 boys from the "Alsterdorfer Institutions”, among them Gerd Schulze, were unhooked and brought to Idstein to the "Curative Education Institution Kalmenhof”.

One month and ten days later Gerd Schulze was dead. In the death certificate his death is documented on the basis of a verbal notification from the head of the "Curative Eduction Institution Kalmenhof” in Idstein: "Institution foster child Gerd Friedrich Wilhelm Schulze – protestant – resident in Idstein, Kalmenhof died on September 16, 1943 at 1.45 AM in Idstein in this home”. The cause of death is given as "Imbecillity” (mental handicap), "nutritional disorder, general weakness, circulatory weakness”. Gerd was four years and three weeks old.

Most of the children who had come to the "Curative Education Institution Kalmenhof” with Gerd died there after a short period of time. As part of the Nazi regime's "Euthanasia" campaign, "Aktion T4" (named after the headquarters at Tiergartenstraße 4, Berlin), children and adolescents were murdered there in the so-called paediatric ward by drug poisoning, mostly by injections of an overdose of the pill Luminal. An eleven-year-old boy who survived was later able to give evidence and testify in the main trial against the head of the institution, Wilhelm Großmann.

It is not known when and by whom Gerd's parents learnt of the "transfer" and the death of their son. From the correspondence with the social administration in 1944 concerning the settlement of the nursing care costs which were still outstanding, it can be seen that Gerd’s mother could not pay the nursing costs since her husband had been "drafted into the police” since the beginning of the war and she and her two children had to subsist solely from family assistance. On August 7, 1944, Mrs. Schulze wrote to the "Alsterdorfer Institutions”: "Someone has to cover these costs, as my husband is in the field and I only received family assistance. The child died in Sept. 43 and I have still had to pay for the funeral."

After the war, the family had to suffer the loss of a child again. The fourth son, Klaus, who was born in July 1945 lived only for one month. He died in the children’s hospital of the free protestant – Lutheran denominational church St Anschar, "Kastanienhof”, Tarpenbekstraße 107 from "Nutrional disorder, Intoxication”.

One year later in October 1946, the fifth son, Axel, was born. He died in 2016, his brother Horst in 2010 and the eldest brother, Peter, in 2015.

Translation: Steve Robinson

Stand: March 2024
© Margot Löhr

Quellen: StaH, 213-12 Staatsanwaltschaft, 0018 Quickert, Wiegand, Dr., u. a: StaH, 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn, Ablieferung 1/1995 Abl. 2000/01; Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Patientenakte V 84; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Auskünfte Michael Wunder; Stadtarchiv Idstein, Auskünfte Claudia Niemann, Sterberegister Standesamt Idstein 170/1943; Klaus Böhme/Uwe Lohalm (Hrsg.): Wege in den Tod. Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993; Herbert Diercks: "Euthanasie". Die Morde an Menschen mit Behinderungen und psychischen Erkrankungen in Hamburg im Nationalsozialismus, hrsg. von der KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, Hamburg 2014; Harald Jenner/Michael Wunder: Hamburger Gedenkbuch Euthanasie. Die Toten 1939–1945, hrsg. von der Senatskanzlei Hamburg und der Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Hamburg, Hamburg 2017; Michael Wunder: Euthanasie in den letzten Kriegsjahren. Die Jahre 1944 und 1945 in der Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn, Husum 1992; Michael Wunder/Ingrid Genkel/Harald Jenner: Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr. Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1987.