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Ernst Wenkel * 1901

Vereinsstraße 39 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
ERNST WENKEL
JG. 1901
VERHAFTET 1938
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
SACHSENHAUSEN
ERMORDET 16.12.1939

Ernst Peter Gustav Olof Wenkel, born on 8.8.1901 in Altona, died on 16.12.1939 in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen

Vereinsstraße 39

"To the Hamburg Criminal Investigation Department
In the house at Vereinsstr. 39 II near Merten lives a person whom Mrs. Merten has kept hidden since last year. His name is Henkel or Senkel; the children to whom he is friendly call him Uncle Ernst. In any case, there is something wrong [...] Please take care of the matter.
With German greetings, Mrs. Schumann".

On the basis of this denunciation letter written in October 1939, which falsely bore the name of a former resident and whose actual author could not be identified, as well as another "confidential" communication about a possible "desertion" to the Gestapo, the National Socialist rulers got on the trail of Ernst Wenkel. For fear of being transferred to a concentration camp, he had been hiding with the family of the confectioner Georg Maerten and his wife Magdalene, née Haufe, and their three children.

Ernst Wenkel was born in Altona in 1901, the son of Hermann Wenkel, a sailor, and Kristina, née Petersdotter. After attending the local elementary school, which he finished at the age of 14, he learned the profession of a merchant in two years at a commercial school. As a commercial employee, he held various positions until 1933, when he became unemployed.

Ernst Wenkel later described himself to the police as a bisexual who had also sought contact with men since 1920. In 1928, he began a prolonged homosexual relationship with the merchant Max Mendel (born 1876, died 1939 Sachsenhausen concentration camp, see Stolperstein in Eimsbütteler Meißnertraße 17a), who was 25 years his senior, and was also financially supported by him during this time.

In 1929 and 1930 he came into conflict with the law for the first time when he practiced homosexual and sadomasochistic fantasies with Walter Breiholdt (b. 1900, declared dead at the end of 1945 after wartime service), an actor at the Volksoper and radio announcer at NORAG who was a friend of his. To this end, both had in two cases posed to schoolboys as police officers and youth welfare officers, respectively, and caught them in alleged criminal acts, including stealing apples, and thereupon given them the alternative of going to the police or receiving a beating.

In 1929, Ernst Wenkel and Walter Breiholdt were each sentenced to six months in prison for this under § 176 in combination with bodily harm; the attempt to commit a comparable crime in 1930 was punished with an additional sentence of one month for presumption of authority and insult. Ernst Wenkel described himself in court as easily influenced and animated to commit the acts by the books on education and corporal punishment borrowed from Walter Breiholdt.

The Altona police learned of his relationship with Max Mendel in 1936, and Ernst Wenkel was subsequently committed to the court prison there on August 27, 1936. After a trial before the Altona Court (Schöffengericht), he and his partner were convicted under § 175. Both men received a prison sentence of five months each. The fact that Ernst Wenkel also received money from Max Mendel was not considered "trafficking." Ernst Wenkel served the sentence in the Altona court prison until January 25, 1937, interrupted only by a hospital stay from September 4 to 8 in the Hamburg Central Hospital.

In January 1938, the packer Egon Alexander (born 1918, from February 1942 "front probation") made the statement during interrogations before the criminal police that he had engaged in homosexual acts with Ernst Wenkel in 1934 and 1935 in exchange for money, whereby the latter had "hardly been able to give him anything because he had nothing himself." When Ernst Wenkel was subsequently summoned to the Kripo at Stadthausbrücke in January 1938, he initially fled to Rotterdam.

He then returned to Hamburg, however, where he hid for months at Vereinsstraße 39 with a Maerten family until he was denounced there by neighbors as a "deserter" and "child molester." Ernst Wenkel, who had also begun an affair with the asylum-giving wife, was provisionally arrested on November 19, 1938. Thereafter, a detention from November 21 to 28 in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp is on record, followed by a new conviction under § 175 in January 1939.

Until May 16, 1939, he served a six-month prison sentence at the Glasmoor Penitentiary and was then transferred to the Gestapo. As he had already feared, he was sent to a concentration camp: on June 25, 1939, his arrival at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in prisoner block 9 is documented. He had to wear the prisoner number 394. After a few months, his death occurred there, which was recorded at the Oranienburg registry office for December 16, 1939. His name is on a cremation list of the Berlin-Baumschulenweg cemetery, where probably his grave can be found.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung, Abl. 2, 451 a E 1, 1 c; 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, A07550/30, 1255/39 u. 8203/ 41; 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferungen 13 u. 16; 332-5 Standesämter, 13678 (Eintrag Nr. 2311); Auskunft von Monika Liebscher, Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen vom 15.11.2012; Dank an Dr. Ste­fan Micheler für die Zurverfügungstellung seiner Forschungsergebnisse aus dem Landes­archiv Schleswig-Holstein zu den dort für Altona verwahrten Strafakten Homosexueller, hier: LAS, Abteilung 352 (Altona), Nr. 7569.