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Helga Nieber, im Mai 1938
© Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf

Helga Nieber * 1931

Erste Brunnenstraße 1 / Ecke Michaelisstraße (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
HELGA DOROTHEA
NIEBER
JG. 1931
EINGEWIESEN 1934
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 16.8.1943
AM SPIEGELGRUND
"KINDERFACHABTEILUNG"
ERMORDET 11.11.1943

further stumbling stones in Erste Brunnenstraße 1 / Ecke Michaelisstraße:
Edith Juschka

Helga Dorothea Nieber, born 26.12.1931 in Hamburg, admitted on 12.6.1934 to the then Alsterdorfer Anstalten, transferred on 16.8.1943 to the Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien, died on 11.11.1943

Erste Brunnenstraße 1/corner of Michaelisstraße (Mauerstraße 21)

Helga Nieber's parents had married on December 8, 1931. Both lived at the former Mauerstraße 21, where Helga was born on Boxing Day of the same year. On June 26, 1932, she was baptized in St. Michael's Church across the street. Her father Adolf Ernst August Nieber (born April 4, 1908 in Hitzacker, district Dannenberg) went to sea as a ship's stoker. Her mother Martha Dorothea, née Claasen, divorced Harms (born February 3, 1897 in Kiel) had a son named Wilhelm Hans Lauritz (born Nov. 6, 1920 in Altona) from her first marriage, which had been contracted on April 10, 1920 and divorced ten years later.

Helga's birth went off without complications, but after three months it became apparent that she was developing differently from children of the same age. On June 12, 1934, at the age of two and a half, Helga was admitted to the Alsterdorf Institutions (today's Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) at the expense of the welfare authorities. The authority's referring medical officer justified her admission with "profound idiocy, complete incapacity for education, helplessness and unbearable restlessness by day and by night."

Institutional staff described Helga Nieber in the patient file as a blond, delicate child who could not walk and whose development was not in keeping with her age after suffering from rickets, a growth disorder caused by malnutrition. The nursing staff further recorded that Helga was very affectionate and in need of love, "when you stroke her hair, a smile crosses her face; she likes to be engaged with, she plays with her doll, observes everything and knows her surroundings." Because Helga was very restless and disturbed the other children, she was isolated at night.

Although Martha Nieber was employed, she asked again for her daughter's release as early as July 1934, which was not granted. However, she was able to bring Helga home "on vacations," such as birthdays.

In September 1938, a note in Helga's medical file read: "She cannot speak, at times she cries a lot. She likes to slide around on the floor. She puts everything in her mouth or chews on everything. [...] Further institutionalization is necessary."

Helga Nieber spent almost nine years of her short life in the Alsterdorf institutions. She probably did not receive any care or support, as she showed aggressive traits in the end. In one of the last entries on March 19, 1943, it was written about her: "Pat.[ient] tears up everything she can reach with her teeth, even though she has a protective jacket on and is strapped in. As a result, she has now been given a kind of neck brace. This stands high and reaches over her mouth. This protection has worked well."

Helga Nieber's alleged aggression was probably also the reason why, on August 16, 1943, at the instigation of the institution's management, she was transferred along with 227 women and girls to the Wagner von Jauregg Sanatorium and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna.

There, the twelve-year-old was first admitted to the women's ward and on September 25, 1943, she and another thirteen girls from "Alsterdorf" were transferred to the "children's ward" (Kinderfachabteilung) of the "Vienna Municipal Mental Hospital for Children, Im Spiegelgrund," Baumgartenhöhe 1. This mental hospital was located on the same grounds, but was an independent institution.

Helga was examined and observed here, and on October 13, 1943, an encephalography was performed, a very painful and not harmless examination of the cerebral ventricles. Shortly thereafter, she was put on a diet, even though she weighed only 19.5 kg at her height of 113 cm.

On October 20, 1943, the head of the "Children's Department," Senior Medical Councillor Ernst Illing, wrote a report on Helga for the "Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Hereditary and Congenital Severe Conditions" (Reichsausschuss zur wissenschaftlichen Erfassung erb- und anlagebedingter schwerer Leiden) in Berlin. He judged that Helga was "mentally quite low" and that an educational or later working ability could be ruled out with certainty. This negative assessment, of which we do not know whether she was sent to Berlin or immediately transferred to the children's specialist department, was decisive for Helga's killing, because only those who still seemed capable in the sense of the Nazi state were allowed to continue living.

Her mother Martha, who had meanwhile moved to Fischerstraße 42 in Hamburg, was bombed out during the heavy air raids in July 1943. She found lodgings at Silbersack 60 with Neumann and initially learned nothing of her child's relocation. In October she wrote to Vienna and asked for information: "According to the circumstances, since I lost my husband, Helga's father at sea [Adolf Nieber, drafted into the Kriegsmarine, was killed southwest of Crete on November 24, 1941], my son from my first marriage succumbed to his wounds in the military hospital on May 19, 1943, and now I also lost my home on July 24-25, I was completely exhausted. So I believed Helga was safe. I went to Alsterdorf too late and had to learn that Helga was gone. Please do not think of me as an indifferent mother, and please let me know."

On November 4, 1943, Martha Nieber received a so-called warning letter from the doctor Ernst Illing in preparation for the news of her death: "With regret we have heard of the difficult fate that has affected you. Your child Helga has been in the local clinic since Sept. 25, 1943. Since admission, there has been no change either physically or mentally. The child is in a reduced state of nutrition. Her daughter is suffering from a probably acquired brain-organic ailment with hydrocephalus, paralysis of all four limbs, and a high degree of mental retardation. Although there is no cause for immediate concern, on the whole the condition must be considered serious."

On November 23, a message followed, signed by the assistant physician Marianne Türk, who had been involved in the "euthanasia," stating that Helga had died of pulmonary tuberculosis on November 11, 1943, and that since a telegram sent to her mother's old address on the day of her death had returned as undeliverable, the free burial had already taken place at the Vienna Central Cemetery.

It was not possible to clarify whether Helga had been deliberately given pneumonia with the drug Luminal. The children were barely fed and received overdosed medication. A vaccine against tuberculosis was also reportedly tested on some of them.

In the dissection protocol, pathologist Uiberrak noted, "rachitic deformed skeleton, bronchitis, TB."

Helga's brain, like the brains of the other thirteen Hamburg children who had been transferred to the "children's specialist department," was used for brain anatomical research purposes; parts were prepared and preserved.

In 1996, Antje Kosemund, whose sister Irma Sperling was also murdered in the "Spiegelgrund", the "Kinderfachabteilung" of the institution, and Michael Wunder of the Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf (Protestant Foundation Alsterdorf) won the release of at least ten brain preparations. They were buried in the field of honor of the Geschwister Scholl Foundation at Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de).

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: February 2022
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2283 u 569/1892; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3385 u 247/1920; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13583 u 724/1931; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1150 u 311/1941; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1166 u 302/1943; Archiv Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf, Patientenakten der Alsterdorfer Anstalten, V 143 Nieber Helga; Michael Wunder/Ingrid Genkel/Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr - Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016; Antje Kosemund, Spurensuche Irma, S. 12-17.