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Erich Kollmorgen * 1897

Schwenckestraße 48 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

gedemütigt / entrechtet
Flucht in den Tod 06.11.1938

Erich Kollmorgen, born 11 Mar. 1897 in Hamburg, committed suicide 6 Nov. 1938 in Hamburg

Schwenckestraße 48

Many homosexual women and men wed in an attempt to avoid social ostracism and protect themselves from persecution, especially during the era of National Socialism. This "escape through matrimony" often meant terrible agony for these partnerships and their families as they were attended with self-deception and a sham existence. Marriage did not, however, provide homosexuals with basic protection from the police since investigations into information on homosexual contact were fundamentally carried out in all directions, and married men were sometimes even punished more severely due to the alleged lack of "need for sexual intercourse".

Erich Kollmorgen belonged to this group of people. He was born in 1897 in Hamburg to the merchant August Kollmorgen and his wife Bertha, born in Damnitz, née Wagenmeister. His father worked for the Hamburg company Hochbahn AG. In 1921 he married Margarethe, née Holz, a clerk from Hanover. They remained childless.

Only a police file on "unnatural deaths" provides information on his homosexual nature, a file created after he was found dead on 6 Nov. 1938 in the kitchen of the three-room apartment he and his wife shared at Schwenckestraße 48. He had poisoned himself in the kitchen with illuminating gas. When questioned by the police, his wife stated that her husband had "had homosexual intercourse several years before". The interrogation records went on to say: "She presumes that her husband has pursued the same aberrations recently […]. He told her he shouldn’t have gotten married because he lied to her and cheated on her. [...] Because he thought he was being persecuted, she assumes that he had taken up homosexual intercourse again and for some reason feared that that intercourse would come to the attention of the authorities. Her husband had tried to commit suicide years before by slitting his wrists."

A Stolperstein in front of Erich Kollmorgen’s last residence on the ground floor of Schwenckestraße 48 memorializes his fate.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

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

Quellen: StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde – Unnatürliche Sterbefälle, 1693/38; Rosenkranz/Bollmann/Lorenz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung, S. 151–154 u. 226.