Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Walter Klahn * 1901

Lehmweg 31 (Hamburg-Nord, Hoheluft-Ost)

HIER WOHNTE
WALTER KLAHN
JG. 1901
VERHAFTET 1940
EMSLANDLAGER
ERMORDET 30.11.1944

Walter Klahn, born 17 June 1901, died 30 Nov. 1944 at the Emsland Camp V Neusustrum

Lehmweg 31

Walter Heinrich Rudolf Klahn was born on June 17th, 1901 in Hamburg and was the only surviving child of the cartwright Rudolf Klahn and his wife Camilla, née Mohr. He was educated as a Lutheran Protestant. After elementary school, he absolved a commercial apprenticeship and up to the end of the 1920s worked at various insurance companies, government agencies and manufacturing companies, including a cigar maker. After several years without a job, he from 1929 on found work as a clerk at various government agencies and the Blohm & Voss shipyard.

In 1931 he got into trouble on account of his homosexual disposition for the first time. The Hamburg district court gave him a fine of 30 RM for "indecent behavior".
The testimony of an 18-year-old rent-boy led to Walter Klahn’s first arrest during the Nazi era on August 14th, 1940. He had met the young man at the public toilet at Millerntor known as a place for homosexual soliciting and performed sexual actions with him in the nearby park at the foot of the Bismarck Monument. At the time, Klahn worked as a clerk at the Hermann Göring Barracks in Wandsbek. After initial denials, having been again "sternly admonished to tell the truth", which can be considered a synonym for the police’s threatening or applying physical violence, and after a lineup, he admitted having had sexual contacts with the boy. For the investigators, Klahn was "a typical homosexual, a so-called auntie.” The situation was aggravated by the testimony of another rent-boy, who further incriminated Klahn, so that he was then sentenced to four months in jail according to Art. 175 of the Penal Code.
Another trial followed after Klahn had been drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1941, possibly due to a further incriminating testimony by Paul Kühnapfel, another Hamburg rent-boy, who by his allegations plummeted many homosexuals to their doom. As a "war offender” Walter Klahn was now brought before the Wehrmacht Court of the Hamburg Division for Special Deployment 410 that sentenced him to 18 months at hard labor, probably according to Art. 175 of the Penal Code, and for disobedience. Thereafter, he was rated as unworthy for military service, and in July 1942 he was transferred, via the Lingen prison, to the convicts’ camp VII Esterwegen in the Emsland. And Odyssey through several Emsland camps and prisons finally brought him to Camp V Neusustrum, where he died on November 30th, 1944. He is probably buried in the Esterwegen Memorial Cemetery.

Translated by Peter Hubschmid

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH, 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 645/41 und 5551/42; StaH, 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Ablieferungen 13 und 16; StaH, 332-8 Meldewesen, A 51/1; Auskünfte Rainer Hoffschildt, Hannover und Christian-Alexander Wäldner, Ronnenburg-Weetzen.