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Hermann Küster * 1892

Eidelstedter Weg 25 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
HERMANN KÜSTER
JG. 1892
MEHRMALS VERHAFTET
ZULETZT 1938
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
SACHSENHAUSEN
ERMORDET 26.4.1942

Hermann Heinrich Peter Andreas Küster, born 26 Apr. 1892 in Hanover, died 26 Apr. 1942 in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

Eidelstedter Weg 25 (Eidelstedterweg 85)

Even in the Weimar Republic era, police patrolled the area around the Bismarck Memorial at night with flashlights, on the lookout for homosexual men who had withdrawn into the bushes to engage in intimacies. Hermann Küster, who had no previous convictions, was apprehended during one of these raids, on 16 May 1932. He and a 23-year-old woodworker were surprised by the police officer Wilcken in an alley between Heiligengeistfeld and Glacischaussee. The law against homosexual activities had not yet been tightened, so they were charged with public indecency. At the trial, the officer said that he had taken offence at their behavior. Hermann Küster admitted his homesexuality, but denied having engaged in immoral behavior, as did his co-defendant. The court did not believe their testimonies, and Küster was levied a fine of 50 Reichsmarks. His partner chose a six-day prison sentence rather than pay the fine of 30 Reichsmarks.

Hermann Küster was born in 1892 in Hanover. His father was a manual laborer, and later became a fireman. His mother was Magdalene Kummer. He had one sister, whose later married name was Bargstedt. He attended school in Hanover until the 9th grade, when the family moved to Hamburg. There he finished his schooling and entered a commercial apprenticeship. He fought in the First World War from 1915 until 1918, then returned to his profession. In 1937 he was the manager of a betting agency. A few years earlier he had met Otto Zipf (*1902), a male prostitute with a police record beginning in 1926, who was arrested in October 1936 for failing to abide by a police order prohibiting him from frequenting establishments or public restrooms known to be meeting places for homosexuals. In the investigation that followed, Hermann Küster, as one of Zipf’s customers, whom he called "Aunt,” was taken into "protective custody” on 13 November 1936 and held in the Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp, where he remained until he was transferred to pre-trial detention on 10 December 1936. In early February 1937 the court found him guilty of the crime of homosexuality and sentenced him to nine months in prison. No documents have survived detailing his time in prison. He was released on 12 August 1937.

About one year after his release, on 21 October 1938, Hermann Küster once again came to the attention of the Hamburg police. Theodor Gehring, a male prostitute who would later be convicted of blackmail, recognized Hermann Küster in a police photo catalogue, and identified him as a former sexual partner, whom he had met around 1935 near the Sternschanze train station and with whom he had spent the night. In 1938 Theodor Gehring met Hermann Küster by chance on Bismarckstraße, whereupon Küster paid him 2 Reichsmarks for a session of mutual masturbation in a stairwell. After being questioned by the police, Hermann Küster was sent to the Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp.
During the next ten days, Küster was repeatedly taken to Gestapo headquarters at the Stadthausbrücke for "in-depth admonishment” (which can be understood as a euphemism for physical maltreatment), after which he made an extensive confession. As a result, the court sentenced him in December 1938 to two years in prison. He was strongly urged "by the judge, in consensus with the District Attorney’s Office,” to have himself voluntarily castrated. He refused to undergo this operation while serving his prison sentence in Fuhlsbüttel, which ended on 21 October 1940. This is possibly the reason that he was released into the custody of the police rather than into freedom. In any case, it must be assumed that he was held in the Hütten jail, although there are no surviving prisoner records, before he was transferred to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. He was registered in Sachsenhausen with the prisoner number 35060 in January 1941 as "B.V. 175” (Berufsverbrecher = repeat offender of Paragraph 175 of the German Criminal Code, the law against male homosexuality).
Hermann Küster soon became ill, and was admitted to the Sachsenhausen infirmary on 19 January 1941. He was admitted again on 10 March, and again on 8 May, this time until 23 July. About three weeks later, on 12 August, he was once again admitted to the infirmary, and remained there until 1 December 1941. His death on 26 April 1942 was recorded at the Oranienburg registry office, with the cause of death listed as "weakness of the heart” as a result of "bronchial pneumonia.”
In 2008, a Stolperstein in his memory was placed at his last freely-chosen residence at his sister’s apartment at Eidelstedter Weg 25 (formerly house number 85).

Theodor Gehring was executed on 9 July 1942 (see: Biography, Henry Heitmann).

Translator: Amy Lee

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Bernhard Rosenkranz(†) / Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, A07518/33, 1193/37 u. 342/39; 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung, Abl. 2, 451 a E 1, 1 a u. Abl. 2, 451 a E 1, 1 c; 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferungen 13 u. 16; Auskunft von Rainer Hoffschildt, Hannover; Auskunft von Monika Liebscher, Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen vom 3.8.2011 und 1.11.2012; Rosenkranz/Bollmann/Lorenz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung, S. 228.