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Kurt Schröder * 1910

Löwenstraße 61 (Hamburg-Nord, Hoheluft-Ost)

HIER WOHNTE
KURT SCHRÖDER
JG. 1910
EINGEWIESEN 1924
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
HEILANSTALT LANGENHORN
"VERLEGT" 28.7.1941
HEILANSTALT TIEGENHOF
ERMORDET 27.10.1942

Kurt Heinrich Ludwig Schröder, born 14.9.1910 in Hamburg, admitted to the former Alsterdorfer Anstalten (today: Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on 29.4.1924, transferred via the Hamburg-Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home on 29.11.1941 to the "Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof" (Polish: Dziekanka) near Gniezno (Polish: Gniezno), died there on 27.10.1942.

Löwenstraße 61 (Hoheluft-Ost)

Kurt Heinrich Ludwig Schröder was born in Hamburg on September 14, 1910. His parents, the bank clerk Heinrich Karl Wilhelm Theodor Schröder, born on March 31, 1884 in Groß Zecher/District of Lauenburg, and Caroline Magdalena Dorothea, née Kraus, born on July 24, 1883 in Altmölln/District of Lauenburg, had married on April 9, 1910 in Hamburg.

On April 29, 1924, at the age of 13, Kurt Schröder was admitted to the then Alsterdorfer Anstalten (today: Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf). His patient file is no longer accessible; probably it accompanied him when he was transferred. The little that we know about Kurt Schröder is taken from a so-called hereditary health card (Erbgesundheitskarte), which was created for the Hamburg Health Passport Archive, established from 1934 onwards, for the purpose of the "hereditary biology inventory" of the population.

The diagnosis noted on this card is "Epilepsy with Imbezillität" (former name for intelligence reduction). It was further noted: "Pat.[ient], who was incurably ill, suffered at times from states of agitation and required constant nursing care. He had hardly any relations to the environment. He was to be regarded as incapable of work."

On July 28, 1941, at least 50 men from the Alsterdorf Institutions were initially transferred to the "Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Langenhorn." Among them was Kurt Schröder. (Three days later, on July 31, 1941, another group with at least 20 women followed).

The groups, most of which concerned people who were particularly weak and unable to work, had been put together on the basis of reporting forms to the euthanasia headquarters at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. At this time, Langenhorn developed into an intermediate institution for the entire Hamburg area and a hub for "euthanasia" in the north of the Reich. The relatives were not supposed to see through the complicated "transfer system" (historian Michael Wunder) that had been set up as a camouflage.

Kurt Schröder was transferred with other men and women from Langenhorn to the Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof (Dziekanka) near Gniezno on November 27, 1941. (The Hamburg Euthanasia Memorial Book contains the names of 66 former Alsterdorf patients who were taken from Langenhorn to Tiegenhof on the transport of November 27, 1941; four of the former seventy Alsterdorf patients had previously died in Langenhorn. A total of 366 people were transported from the Langenhorn sanatorium to the Tiegenhof Gau sanatorium in several transports between November 14 and 27, 1941. In the Hamburg memorial book Euthanasia 206 persons are named).

The psychiatric institution Dziekanka near Gniezno, which was named "Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof" after the German invasion of Poland, had been occupied by the German Wehrmacht in October 1939. Until the summer/fall of 1941, Polish patients were murdered in several actions. When the patients from Hamburg arrived at Tiegenhof, German inmates were also killed, namely by systematic starvation, by overdosing on medication as well as by neglect.

For this purpose, separate killing rooms were located in the patients' quarters, where the defenseless and debilitated victims were given lethal agents as injections, introduced by means of enema, or dissolved in soup.

Kurt Schröder died eleven months after his arrival at Tiegenhof on October 27, 1942.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: February 2022
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: StaH 332-5 Standesämter 8668 Nr. 83/1910 Heiratsregistereintrag Heinrich Karl Wilhelm Schröder/Caroline Magdalena Dorothea Kraus; Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Erbgesundheitskarteikarte von Kurt Heinrich Ludwig Schröder; Michale Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, 3. Auflage 2016, Stuttgart , S. 269 ff.; Enno Schwanke, Die Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Tiegenhof, Frankfurt/M., 2015.