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links: Brunhild und Krankenschwester im Garten des KKR, ca. Juni 1944; rechts: Brunhild nach ihrem Tod auf dem Boden des Bunkers
© Privatbesitz

Brunhild Stobbe * 1944

Marckmannstraße 135 (ehemalige Kinderklinik) (Hamburg-Mitte, Rothenburgsort)

BRUNHILD STOBBE
GEB. 5.4.1944
ERMORDET 1.11.1944

further stumbling stones in Marckmannstraße 135 (ehemalige Kinderklinik):
Andreas Ahlemann, Rita Ahrens, Ursula Bade, Hermann Beekhuis, Ute Conrad, Helga Deede, Jürgen Dobbert, Anneliese Drost, Siegfried Findelkind, Rolf Förster, Volker Grimm, Antje Hinrichs, Lisa Huesmann, Gundula Johns, Peter Löding, Angela Lucassen, Elfriede Maaker, Renate Müller, Werner Nohr, Harald Noll, Agnes Petersen, Renate Pöhls, Gebhard Pribbernow, Hannelore Scholz, Doris Schreiber, Ilse Angelika Schultz, Dagmar Schulz, Magdalene Schütte, Gretel Schwieger, Hans Tammling, Peter Timm, Heinz Weidenhausen, Renate Wilken, Horst Willhöft

Rothenburgsort Children's Hospital

In the former Rothenburgsort Children's Hospital, the National Socialists implemented their "euthanasia program" from the early 1940s.
Hildegard Thevs was able to research 33 names of murdered children.

A plaque on the building has commemorated the more than 50 murdered babies and children since 1999:

In this building
between 1941 and 1945
more than 50 handicapped children were killed.
An expert committee classified them
as "unworthy life" and assigned them
to be killed in specialized children's wards.
The Hamburg health administration
was involved in this.
Hamburg medical officers supervised
the admission and killing of the children.
Doctors of the children's hospital
carried them out.
None of those involved
was prosecuted for this.


Further information (in German) on the Internet at:

35 Stolpersteine für Rothenburgsort – Hamburger Abendblatt 10.10.2009

Stolpersteine für ermordete Kinder – ND 10.10.2009

Stolpersteine gegen das Vergessen – Pressestelle des Senats 09.10.2009

Die toten Kinder von Rothenburgsort – Nordelbien.de 09.10.2009

35 Stolpersteine verlegt – Hamburg 1 mit Video 09.10.2009

Wikipedia - Institut für Hygiene und Umwelt

Gedenken an mehr als 50 ermordete Kinder - Die Welt 10.11.1999

Euthanasie-Opfer der Nazis - Beitrag NDR Fernsehen 29.05.2010

Hitler und das "lebensunwerte Leben" - Andreas Schlebach NDR 24.08.2009
©

Brunhild Stobbe, b. 4.5.1944 in Mentin near Parchim (Mecklenburg), murdered on 11.1.1944

Marckmannstraße 135

The Stobbe family, before its evacuation, lived in Scharnebeck on the Elbe at Damaschkestrasse 10 (Harburg); they were bombed out in July and August of 1943. The family consisted of the father, Fritz Wilhelm Stobbe, the mother Olga Selma Juliane, née Jentzsch, and their five and three and one-half year old daughters, Uta and Gudrun. The parents listed themselves as of no religion.

Fritz Stobbe joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) out of conviction. In 1938, he worked as a bookkeeper for the German Labor Front (DAF) in the Gau Administration of East Hanover, until c. 1941 when he was drafted into the German Armed Forces. The couple both came down with jaundice in 1943 when Olga was pregnant with Brunhild. The child was born a few weeks late, with a weight of 8.8 lbs, in the Nazi People’s Welfare Organization (NSV) home at Mentin (Tel. Marnitz 42). At the birth of his daughter, Fritz Stobbe was already a POW in the USSR; he never saw his daughter Brunhild.

On her tenth day of life, Brunhild experienced cramps that appeared after drinking and increased in frequency. She received low doses of Luminal, which made her sleepy; she drank with difficulty. Dr. Röper from the city hospital in Parchim diagnosed "cramps" and had her sent to the Children’s Hospital in Rothenburgsort. Her mother brought her there on 22 April 1944, when she was eighteen days old. Despite her drinking difficulties, Brunhild was still strong. There was a correspondence with the hospital on the issue of food ration cards. Her mother visited Brunhild several times and apparently discussed her illness and treatment with the director, Wilhelm Bayer, or with her doctors.

The attending physician suspected that Brunhild suffered from a brain hemorrhage or "Hydrocephalus" and began examinations on the following day. For her attacks of cramps, Brunhild received Luminal or other palliatives as needed. After two months of observation, there were no indications of "abnormal cerebral development.” Only ten days later, the measurement of the circumference of Brunhild’s head showed a slow growth; it addition, it was very sore. Because of slight anemia, she received transfusions on three successive days with her mother as donor; she tolerated the transfusions well. On the strength of experiments with malaria cures for attacks of cramps, Brunhild, now three months old, was injected with malaria pathogens. The cure was successful. Nevertheless, on 16 August 1944, Brunhild was reported to the "Reich Commission” with a diagnosis of "microcephaly,” that is, an abnormally small head.

From 10 August until 25 October, 1944, Bruhild, with few interruptions, spent ten or more hours a day in an air raid shelter. At the end of this period, her hemogram had improved, but she became feverish, drank poorly, and showed signs of pneumonia. Because of this she was x-rayed on 30 and 31 October. Brunhild died on 1 November 1944. She was seven months old. She came to the Rothenburgsort Children’s Hospital on her eighteenth day and spent the rest of her short life burdened by intrusive and painful examinations and stays in a bunker.

At the time of Brunhild’s death, her mother and sisters lived in Scharnebeck. Olga Fischer, Brunhild’s maternal grandmother, who lived in Eppendorf, reported the death at the Billbrook Registry Office (which also serve Rothenburgsort) and had Brunhild buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery. The cause of death in the official death registry was given as, in addition to pneumonia, "imbecility.”

After the war, no one took responsibility for the murder of Brunhild Stobbe. Wilhelm Bayer maintained that she had two bouts of pneumonia and that the second led to her death. Dr. Gisela Schwabe claimed Brunhild died in the bunker; the nurse Charlotte Petersen recalled that Bruhild Stobbe died in the bath. She had demonstrated the intravenous injection to the ward nurse Hanna Westermann because Brunhild had previously not received intramuscular injections. Hanna Westermann could not recall this incident and generally did not remember the infant, even though she administered the medical chart for weeks.

The costs of Brunhild’s stay in the hospital, excepting the sum of RM 44, were apparently borne by the Barmer Insurance Fund. After the end of the war, the hospital collected this outstanding amount from her mother.

Epilogue

Im January 2014, Jan Erik Williams of Edmonton, Canada, the third son of Gudrun Williams, née Stobbe, accidentally came across the name of his Aunt Brunhild Stobbe, while reading about euthanasia on the Internet. Gudrun Williams reported that her deceased mother had never doubted that Brunhild had been murdered. Because her perception is expressed on the commemorative stone, Gudrun felt released from the uncertainty about the death of her sister. Brunhild’s memory was kept alive in the family because of the contact between Brunhild’s mother and personnel in the children’s hospital. A children’s nurse, possibly Charlotte Petersen, kept a diary concerning "Bruni” and took photographs, which she delivered to the family. Fully of empathy, she described the relentless worsening of Brunhild’s condition, finding comfort only in the fact that she did not seem to suffer. Despite the lack of church affiliation of Brunhild’s parents, she ended her log with a verse from a Ludwig Uhland song:

You came, you left a tender trace,
A fleeting guest on earthly land,
From whence? Whither to? – We know not
Out of God’s hand – into God’s hand.


Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: January 2019
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: StaH 213-12, Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – NSG, 0017/001, Bd. II, pass.; 332-5 Standesämter, (StA Bk 443) 1237+ 443/1944; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn, Abl. 2000/01, 63 UA 6; Tagebuchaufzeichnungen einer Säuglingsschwester; Dank an Gudrun Williams für Korrekturen und Ergänzungen, Mai 2014.