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Else Stern * 1919

Lutterothstraße 85 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
ELSE STERN
JG. 1919
EINGEWIESEN 1925
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
"VERLEGT" 27.11.1941
HEILANSTALT TIEGENHOF
ERMORDET 15.3.1942

Else Anni Stern, born 21.12.1919 in Hamburg, admitted to the former Alsterdorfer Anstalten (today: Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on 7.9.1925, transferred via the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Hamburg-Langenhorn on 27.11.1941 to the Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof (Polish: Dziekanka) in Gniezno, where she died on 15.3.1942.

Lutterothstraße 85 (Eimsbüttel)

Else Anni Stern was one of three children of the tailor Robert Gustav Carl Christian Stern and his wife Anna Wilhelmine, née Horns. Gustav Stern, who came from Sülze in Mecklenburg, and Anna Horns from Ottensen had married in Hamburg in 1910.

Else had been born in Hamburg on December 21, 1919. She had two siblings, about whom we know nothing further. Little is known about Else Stern's life either. Her patient file has not been preserved. Only a file card, which was created for the Hamburg Health Passport Archive, established from 1934 for the purpose of the "hereditary-biological inventory" of the population, contains meager information: According to it, Else Stern must have been born with physical disabilities, including a double hip dislocation.

She was admitted to the then Alsterdorfer Anstalten (today: Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) in September 1925. She had needed help with personal hygiene. Her speech, according to the note on the index card, was "very deficient." She was described as calm and tolerable, but also as "often stubborn."

On July 28, 1941, at least 50 men from the Alsterdorf institutions were initially transferred to the "Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Langenhorn." Three days later, on July 31, 1941, another group of at least 20 women followed. Else Stern was one of them.

These groups, which consisted mainly of people who were particularly weak and unable to work, had been assembled on the basis of reporting forms to the euthanasia headquarters at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin. At this time, Langenhorn developed into the intermediate institution for the entire Hamburg area and the hub of "euthanasia" in the north of the Reich. The relatives were not supposed to see through this complicated "displacement system" (historian Michael Wunder), which was set up as a camouflage.

Else Stern was transferred with other women and men from Langenhorn to the so-called Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof (Dziekanka) near Gniezno on November 27, 1941. (The Hamburg Euthanasia Memorial Book contains the names of 66 former Alsterdorf patients who were taken to Tiegenhof with this transport; four of the former seventy Alsterdorf patients had previously died in Langenhorn. A total of 366 people were transported from the Langenhorn sanatorium to the Tiegenhof Gau sanatorium in several transports between November 14 and 27, 1941. In the Hamburg memorial book Euthanasia 206 persons are named).

The Dziekanka psychiatric institution near Gniezno, which was given the name "Gau-Heilanstalt Tiegenhof" after the German invasion of Poland, was occupied by the German Wehrmacht in October 1939. Until the summer/fall of 1941, Polish patients were murdered in several actions. When the patients from Hamburg arrived at Tiegenhof, German inmates were also killed, namely by systematic starvation, by overdosing on medication as well as by neglect.

For this purpose, separate killing rooms were located in the patients' quarters, where the defenseless and debilitated victims were given lethal agents as injections, introduced by means of enema, or dissolved in soup.
Else Anni Stern died fourteen weeks after her arrival at Tiegenhof on March 15, 1942.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: February 2022
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: StaH 332-5_8670 Heiratsregister Nr. 219/1910 Robert Gustav Carl Christian Stern, Anna Wilhelmine Horns; 332-5_9890 Sterberegister Nr. 998/1937 Robert Gustav Carl Christian Stern; Landesarchiv Greifswald, FHL Filmnummer 69585; Evang. Stiftung Alsterdorf, Archiv, Erbgesundheitskarteikarte Else Stern; Michael Wunder, Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner: Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr – Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, 3. Auflage, Stuttgart 2016, S. 269 ff.; Enno Schwanke, Die Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Tiegenhof. Die nationalsozialistische Euthanasie in Polen während des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Frankfurt/M. 2015.