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Ursula Bade * 1941

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

URSULA BADE
GEB. 1.12.1941
ERMORDET 28.8.1944

further stumbling stones in Marckmannstraße 135 (ehemalige Kinderklinik):
Andreas Ahlemann, Rita Ahrens, 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, Brunhild Stobbe, 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
©

Ursula Bade, born on 1 Dec. 1941 in Hamburg, murdered on 28 Aug. 1944

Put up for adoption, Ursula was murdered when she was a little child because no one found a place where she could live. Although – as Wilhelm Bayer, the senior physician at Rothenburgsort Children’s Hospital diagnosed on 5 June 1944 – she supposedly showed "considerable mental underdevelopment, which one might almost classify as idiocy,” the encephalogram had not produced any clear pathological result. On the other hand, according to Bayer, under these circumstances adoption was probably not worth considering, and a foster home did not seem appropriate in his view, but her committal to an institution did. Ursula Bade was not among those children with severe disabilities as listed by the "Reich Committee” ("Reichsausschuss”). The documents available do not reveal why she was not accommodated in a – more cost-effective – institution but instead stayed at the Children’s Hospital for another two and a half months. Presumably, she would have had a fair chance of survival in a Hamburg institution at that time. She obviously became a victim of unsettled jurisdictions, since the adoption office of the Gau [Nazi administrative district] neither wanted to put her up for adoption nor admit her to an institution.

Ursula was born on 1 Dec. 1941 as the daughter of the usher Carla Bade and senior police lieutenant (Polizeioberleutnant) Heinrich Wieck in Hamburg. She was baptized in the Protestant church. Her last address prior to being given up for adoption was Buchholz in der Nordheide. The authority that received jurisdiction over her was the Gau adoption office on Schlageterring (today: Südring) in Hamburg-Winterhude.

We know nothing about the initial two-and-a-quarter years of Ursula’s life. When she was put in the foster care of a married couple in Hamburg-Volksdorf, her foster mother noticed that she was ill. She had boils on her lower abdomen and suffered from moderate bronchitis. The Volksdorf-based physician E. Schröder committed Ursula to the Children’s Hospital. On 21 Mar. 1944, the foster mother brought her to the Pestalozzi Home in Wohldorf at Diestelstrasse 30, where an alternate hospital had been established in the fall of 1943 after the Rothenburgsort Children’s Hospital had sustained serious damage during the firestorm. Thus, this guardianship ended after a very brief period.

The admitting physician, Ingeborg Wetzel, ascertained that Ursula was in a good general state of health. According to Wetzel, however, she made "the impression of being imbecile,” did not seem to understand when spoken to, walked only when held by the hand, and was needy of affection. On her buttocks, she had a healed-up abscess, apparently from a boil. Wetzel’s diagnosis was "feeble-mindedness (considerable intellectual deficiency), infection of the upper respiratory tract.”

In the days ahead, Ursula attracted attention due to behavior that today would probably be interpreted as hospitalism, which develops only from staying in an institution: She did not play, often throwing herself about in a rocking motion while making inarticulate noises. Whereas she did not grab objects held in front of her, she extended her arms as soon as someone approached her bed. When after only one week she was transferred to the infectious diseases ward of hospital headquarters in Rothenburgsort due to an infection with scarlet fever, she did not relate to her surroundings at all and showed no need for affection.

At the beginning of May, Bayer had mentioned to the Gau adoption office that the examination had not yielded any pathological findings. In mid-May, care personnel noticed that Ursula was becoming a bit livelier, was standing up more steadily and looking around from her bed. However, she did not speak nor seem to understand anything. The files do not reveal whether she ever underwent a hearing test.

Ursula Bade was then scheduled to be discharged, but the Gau adoption office lacked any accommodation for her. After a conversation with Lotte Albers, the ward physician, about Ursula’s mental and physical development, the designated adoptive father backed out of the adoption. On 1 June 1944, the physician noted that Ursula was doing well, though she was not ready to be picked up from the hospital yet – apparently, because no one wanted her.

Shortly afterwards, Ursula fell ill with measles, which took a normal course without complications, but in the aftermath she lay in her bed apathetically. In order to build up her strength again, in mid-July Bayer ordered a two-week Malaria therapy, but the treatment brought no improvement. The three subsequent weeks passed without any change. Ursula remained free of fever and pale, though showing good appetite.

On 25 Aug. 1944, Bayer instructed the still inexperienced assistant physician Ortrud von Lamezan – she had begun working at the clinic only on 1 Aug. – to carry out a myelography on Ursula. In the course of the judicial inquiry after the war, she stated on this point that she had "not administered the iodipin injection … because I was still inexperienced as a physician at the time. The iodipin injection was done by Dr. Albers or Dr. Wetzel. I do not know what dose of iodipin was injected. Following the injection, the myelogram was prepared by x-ray.” The examination was marked on the temperature curve, and so was the medical check-up done two days later. A handwritten remark by Bayer below the progress notes, "Effect of myelogram on cerebrally abnormal child? Effect of iodipin?,” was addressed to the physician. A myelogram was supposed to answer these questions.

Although Ursula Bade had received 1 ccm Phenobarbital (Luminal) each on the day of and on the day prior to the myelography for better tolerability, she subsequently vomited several times, was restless, and cried a lot, though she had not suffered any paralysis. Vomiting stopped only after three days but a bloody-watery liquid was discharged from her nose and mouth. On 28 Aug. 1944, she died of "cerebral disease, pneumonia.” Five days later, the student Hannelore B. from Bergedorf gave notice of the death to the records office in Billbrook.

Ursula was murdered, probably as a result of an injection of Phenobarbital (Luminal) administered by Ortrud von Lamezan, as one nurse claimed, or due to the fatal effect of the myelography, ordered without any diagnostic benefit to Ursula.

Ursula spent 160 days in the Rothenburgsort Children’s Hospital, not receiving a single visit. The last days of her life were agonizing. Since she was not personally important to anyone, it was possible to instrumentalize her toward training an assistant physician. She reached two and three-quarter years of age.

If the "Reich Committee” had granted permission to observe and "treat” Ursula, it would have covered the costs. As it was, her file contains extensive correspondence concerning hospital expenses that continued beyond the end of the war. There was no health insurance company to carry the costs, the adoption office of the Gau had no funds, and the social security administration felt it had no jurisdiction in the matter and approached the father, who paid several installments before he was killed in action outside Harburg, just prior to the end of the war. It is not known whether the lawyers brought in by the hospital succeeded in obtaining payment of their claims from Ursula’s mother and uncle.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: StaH 213-12 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht NSG, 0017-004; 332-5 Standesämter, 1237+168/ 1944; 352-8/7 Staatskrankenanstalt Langenhorn, Abl. 2000/1, 63 UA 10.