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Alice Lüder
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Alice Lüder * 1901

Jarrestraße 54 (Hamburg-Nord, Winterhude)

HIER WOHNTE
ALICE LÜDER
JG. 1901
EINGEWIESEN 1909
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
´VERLEGT` 16.8.1943
HEILANSTALT
AM STEINHOF / WIEN
TOT AN DEN FOLGEN
23. OKT. 1945

Alice Lüder, born 19.1.1901 in Hamburg, admitted to the former Alsterdorf Asylum on 1.2.1909, transferred to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital on 5.8.1925, readmitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum on 29.3.1935, transported to Vienna on 16.8.1943 to the ‘Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien’, died there on 23.10.1945

Jarrestraße 54, Winterhude

Alice Lüder was born on 19 Jan. 1901 in Eppendorf Hospital. She was initially called Sontheim, like her mother, the worker Emma Elisabeth Alice Sontheim, who was born on 8 Sept. 1878 in the then still independent Prussian town of Wandsbek. Walter Mexter, Alice's biological father, is said to have been of Mexican origin and died of malaria. We do not know anything more about him.

Emma Sontheim married the coachman and later coal worker Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Lüder, born on 20 June 1880 in Hamburg, on 26 Nov. 1903. He adopted little Alice on 28 Jan. 1904, who thus received the surname Lüder.

Emma and Carl Lüder are said to have had six children together, two of whom died early of ‘weakness of life’. No further details are known.

Alice Lüder lived with her parents at Jarrestraße 54 in Hamburg-Winterhude for the first few years of her life. She only learnt to speak and walk at the age of five. On 1 Feb. 1909, she was admitted to the former Alsterdorf Asylum (‘Alsterdorfer Anstalten’ now the ‘Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf’) with a diagnosis of ‘idiocy’. (‘Idiocy’ is an outdated term for a severe form of intellectual disability).

When she was admitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum, she was referred to as a ‘mulatto type’ because of her brown skin colour. Her language was considered ‘cute’. It was said that she liked to play, knew little poems by heart and did little handouts. The teacher at the residential school described her behaviour as quite good. She took part in lessons quite lively, but her ability to think was very weak, whereas her memory was quite good. She was able to distinguish colours and name them correctly. She was proud of her brown skin colour. She followed the lessons with great interest. However, she made no progress in maths, writing or reading.

In 1911 and 1912, Alice was allowed to go on holiday with her parents several times.

The Hamburg Welfare Office had to pay for the accommodation in the Alsterdorf Asylum. It was therefore interested in ending or reducing the payments. In response to an enquiry from the Welfare Office in July 1923 as to whether Alice Lüder could be released from the institution or transferred to the care home (Versorgungsheim) [with lower cost rates], the institutions replied: ‘To the kind enquiry of the tenth of the month, we humbly reply that Alice Lüder is a benign girl who is mentally at the level of a four-year-old child. She cannot dress and wash herself or comb her hair, and her gait is impaired by previous operations.’ In April 1924, the Welfare Office repeated its enquiry and again received a negative response from Alsterdorf.

In September 1924, however, according to the medical records, Alice Lüder behaved very withdrawn, tore her clothes and showed no interest in her surroundings. Alice Lüder was deemed no longer suitable for the Alsterdorf Asylum and was transferred to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital on 5 Aug. 1925 on the reason that she was ‘frequently agitated, shows a lively urge to talk and move and a destructive drive, pinches, pushes and torments her fellow patients’.

Alice Lüder's adoptive father received the following distant and business-like message: ‘We regret to inform you that your daughter Alice is no longer suitable for our asylum because of her frequent states of excitement, in which she displays destructive behaviour and pinches, pushes and torments her fellow pupils. Our senior physician has therefore ordered her transfer to the Friedrichsberg State Hospital, which took place today. Yours sincerely, The management’

A summary of her medical history by the Friedrichsberg State Hospital also contains the note ‘Mulatto skin and hair colour’ in the admission report, which was unnecessary in this context. Her behaviour had been changeable, at times very loud and almost impossible to calm, then again unresponsive, radiantly cheerful, given to childish teasing. Her behaviour could be described as imbecile, almost devious. Alice Lüder was described in Friedrichsberg as occasionally stuporous, i.e. without recognisable mental or physical activity.

Alice Lüder's stay at the Friedrichsberg State Hospital ended on 29 March 1935, the day she became a patient at the Alsterdorf Asylum for the second time. The reasons for the transfer from Friedrichsberg to Alsterdorf are not documented. Based on the medical histories of other people, it can be assumed that there were no longer any therapeutic options for Alice Lüder in Friedrichsberg.

Back in Alsterdorf, she was perceived as ‘always cheerful and in good spirits’. She ‘liked to do little helpings and little walks. She keeps herself clean on her own. Takes great pleasure in beautiful hair bows and things like that’. She was obviously very sociable and initiated conversations with questions such as: ‘Do you like me?’ ‘Aren't I pretty?’ In 1938/1939, her previous friendliness disappeared. She was said to have become ‘very cheeky and naughty’ and used ‘terrible swear words’. She once tore off the blackout curtain in the dormitory and banged her head against a window pane, causing it to shatter. Because she ‘spoilt’ her section with her behaviour, she had to stay in the guard room and the isolation room.

‘Guard rooms’ already existed in the 1910s. Restless patients were isolated there and treated with permanent baths, sleep and fever cures. They were introduced in the Alsterdorf institutions at the end of the 1920s. Their function changed over the course of the 1930s: patients were now primarily sedated here, sometimes with medication, sometimes with restraints or other measures. Those affected often perceived this as punishment.

During the heavy air raids on Hamburg at the end of July/beginning of August 1943 (‘Operation Gomorrah’), the Alsterdorf Asylum also suffered bomb damage. The head of the institution, SA member Pastor Friedrich Lensch, took the opportunity to get rid of some of the residents who were considered ‘weak in labour, in need of care or particularly difficult’ by transporting them to other sanatoriums and nursing homes with the approval of the health authorities. On 16 Aug. 1943, 228 women and girls from Alsterdorf and 72 girls and women from the Langenhorn Sanatorium and Nursing Home were ‘transferred’ to the ‘Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien’ (also known as the institution ‘Am Steinhof’) in Vienna on one of these transports. Alice Lüder was among them.

During the admission interview in Vienna, Alice Lüder said that she had peeled potatoes in Hamburg and wanted to stay in Vienna. Her diagnosis here was: Imbecility, heredity. (Imbecility is no longer a common term for a moderate mental disability with an intelligence quotient between 20 and 49).

Towards the end of 1943, Alice Lüder is said to have been poorly orientated. Her weight, which had been given as 47 kg when she was admitted to Vienna, was now only 37 kg. In 1944, a few entries in the medical file stated that her condition was the same as in 1943.

Although impairments to her state of health were not noted, Alice Lüder was in the nursing section of the institution from 20 Nov. 1944. However, more importance was attached to her appearance. In June 1945, this note can be found in her medical file: ‘Appearance less like a mestizo, more like a mulatto. Brown skin colour, bulging lips, flat nose, grey, black, somewhat curly hair, but claims to be a 'Stize', rejects the term 'mulatto'.’

As previously noted, ‘in the day room, poorly orientated, quiet and docile, without occupation, sleep and appetite good.’ On 17 Oct. 1945, diarrhoea was diagnosed, but the examination revealed no signs of illness. A few days later, on 23 Oct. 1945, Alice Lüder died. In addition to ‘imbecility’, two other reasons were given as the cause of death, which cannot be deciphered.

During the first phase of Nazi ‘euthanasia’ from October 1939 to August 1941, the institution in Vienna was an intermediate institution for the Hartheim killing centre near Linz. After the official end of the murders in the killing centres, mass murders continued in previous intermediate institutions, including the Vienna institution itself: through overdoses of medication and non-treatment of illness, but above all through food deprivation.

By the end of 1945, 257 of the 300 girls and women from Hamburg had died, 196 of them from Alsterdorf.

Stand: January 2025
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3832 Geburtsregister Nr. 473 (Emma Elisabeth Alice Sontheim), 13613 Geburtsregister Nr. 201/1901 (Alice Sontheim/Lüder), 2999 Heiratsregister Nr. 985/1903 (Emma Elisabeth Alice Sontheim/ Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Lüder); Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Sonderakte V 159 (Alice Lüder). Peter von Rönn, Der Transport nach Wien, in: Peter von Rönn u.a., Wege in den Tod, Hamburgs Anstalt Langenhorn und die Euthanasie in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, Hamburg 1993, S. 425 ff. Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 35, 283 ff., 331 ff.