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Fanny Uckert * 1908

Mansteinstraße 21 (Eimsbüttel, Hoheluft-West)

HIER WOHNTE
FANNY UCKERT
JG. 1908
EINGEWIESEN 1919
ALSTERDORFER ANSTALTEN
´VERLEGT‘ 16.8.1943
AM STEINHOF WIEN
ERMORDET 25.3.1945

Fanny Henriette Uckert, born 15.9.1908 in Hamburg, admitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum ("Alsterdorfer Anstalten, now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) on 2.5.1919, "transferred" to Vienna on 16.8.1943 to the "Wagner von Jauregg - Curative and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna” ("Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien", also known as the institution "Am Steinhof), murdered there on 25.3.1945

Mansteinstraße 21, Hoheluft-West

Fanni Elise Marie Dittmann gave birth to a daughter, Fanny Henriette, in the Hamburg-Eppendorf General Hospital on 15 Sept. 1908. The biological father was the accountant (commercial employee) Amandus Henry Uckert. The child Fanny Henriette was baptized Lutheran when it was still in the hospital. The second child born of this relationship was Arthur, born on 21 March 1910.

The children's parents were born in Hamburg: Fanni Elise Dittmann on 12 June 1888, and Amandus Henry Uckert on 5 March 1889. The couple got married on 12 Jan. 1916, and then lived in Fanni Dittmann's previous home at Mansteinstraße 21, Hoheluft-West. Henry Uckert acknowledged the paternity of Fanny and Arthur Dittmann on 18 Jan. 1916, by declaration to a registrar. From then on, the children bore the surname Uckert.

Fanny Uckert attended the "auxiliary school" in Osterstraße in the Eimsbüttel district in 1916/1917. School attendance was terminated due to her "physical ailments." The physician Dr. Nemann (biography www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) stated on 24 March 1919, "on the basis of an examination made personally [...] I declare the admission of Fanny Uckert [...] necessary because of imbecility. Cannot learn, cannot comprehend anything. Learning to read and write was impossible, language is very laborious." (The term "imbecility", no longer used today, referred to a reduction in intelligence or congenital intelligence weakness).

Shortly after Fanny Uckert's father asked for his daughter to be admitted to the Alsterdorf Asylum (Alsterdorfer Anstalten, today Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf), nine-year-old Fanny was admitted as a resident of this institution on 2 May 1919.
Fanny's parents were obviously very concerned about their daughter. She was given eleven "leaves of absence" to visit her family in 1921.

The girl had to be combed and dressed according to the entries in her medical records. She was considered tolerable, good-natured, and clean, but unable to work. These descriptions were repeated largely unchanged in the following years. The number of visits to the family decreased somewhat over the years, but Fanny always spent the Christmas holidays in the family circle.

The surviving documents reveal little about the conditions in Fanny Uckert's parental home. However, they must not have been easy. Financially, the situation became increasingly strained. As early as 1920, Henry Uckert applied for a reduction in his contribution to Alsterdorf: his income was only 700 M per month and he had to support his wife, his son and his mother-in-law. From 1926 on, Henry Uckert no longer contributed anything to the institution's costs, so that the welfare authority had to take over the asylum’s costs completely.

The marriage of Fanni and Henry Uckert was divorced on 18 July 1929, and the divorce attained legal force on 24 Aug. 1929.

In 1932, Fanny Uckert suffered convulsions for the first time, combined with prolonged unconsciousness. However, the young woman continued to receive "leave" for visits to family members.

During the heavy air raids on Hamburg at the end of July/beginning of August 1943 ("Operation Gomorrha"), the Alsterdorf Asylum also suffered bomb damage. The director of the institution, SA member Pastor Friedrich Lensch, took the opportunity, with the approval of the health authorities, to get rid of some of the residents who were considered to be "weak in labor, in need of care or particularly difficult" by transporting them to other sanatoriums and nursing homes. On 16 Aug. 1943, 228 women and girls from Alsterdorf and 72 girls and women from the Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home were "transferred" to Vienna to the "Wagner von Jauregg - Curative and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna” ("Wagner von Jauregg-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt der Stadt Wien", also known as the institution "Am Steinhof"). Among them was Fanny Uckert.

In Vienna, it was repeatedly noted that Fanny Uckert was unoccupied. She was always segregated and had to be urged to take care of herself.

In November 1944, the Viennese institutions filled out the "reporting form I” ("Meldebogen I"), which was used during the first euthanasia phase from 1939 to 1941 to report important data on the inmates of the asylums to the euthanasia headquarters in Berlin, Tiergartenstraße 4. Based on these informations, it was decided there whether people with disabilities or mental or spiritual illnesses were to be killed in one of the six gas killing institutions. In the case of Fanny Uckert, the diagnosis "imbecility" (feeble-mindedness, see above) was entered and it was noted that her relatives were unknown and that she did not receive any visitors. The medical records do not indicate whether this notification sheet was sent to Berlin or whether it had any influence on her further fate.

In 1944/early 1945, negative entries about Fanny Uckert in her patient file increased: "Unoccupied, always sits apart, must be urged to personal hygiene, disorderly, stares ahead of herself, gives no answers to questions, makes a ridiculous impression." On 15 Jan. 1945 Fanny Uckert was "transferred to the nursing home”. Reasons are not noted.

On 24 March 1945, according to the entries, Fanny Uckert suddenly complained in the evening of "pain in stomach, had diarrhea. Died at 3:00 a.m. (on 25 March)." The file gave intestinal inflammation as first presumption of the cause of death, but the autopsy protocol notes pulmonary and intestinal TB.

During the first phase of Nazi "euthanasia" from October 1939 to August 1941, the asylum in Vienna had been an intermediate facility for the Hartheim killing center near Linz. After the official end of the killings in these centers, however, mass murder continued in previous intermediate institutions, i.e. also in the Vienna institution itself: by overdosing on medication and failure to treat illness, but above all by deprivation of food.

Of the 300 girls and women from Hamburg, 257 had died by the end of 1945, 196 of them from Alsterdorf.

Fanny Uckert's parents initially received no information about their daughter's death. It is not clear how the mother Fanni Uckert nevertheless learned that her daughter had died. She wrote to the management of the asylum in Vienna on 23 Oct. 1946: "1 1/2 years ago my daughter Fanny, born on 15.9.1908, passed away in your asylum. Since I have not been able to find out more about her death, I would like to ask you to inform me of the date of her death and what she died of.
In addition, there was a large doll in my daughter's possession which I would like to have back. How will my daughter's estate be settled?
Waiting for your reply,
Yours respectfully,
Mrs. Fanni Uckert.

On 9 Nov. 1946 Fanni Uckert received the following terse reply: "Ucker Fanny died of pulmonary and intestinal tuberculosis on 23 October 1945. Dr. Nowotny e.h.".

Translation: Elisabeth Wendland

Stand: July 2023
© Ingo Wille

Quellen: AB Hamburg, 332-5 Standesämter 2196 Geburtsregister Nr. 997/1889 Amandus Henry Uckert , 113990 Geburtsregister Nr. 1001/1910 Arthur Uckert, 113253 Geburtsregister Nr. 2862/1908, 8714 Heiratsregister Nr. 9/1916 Fanni Elise Marie Dittmann/ Amandus Henry Uckert, 9846 Sterberegister Nr. 479/1930 Amandus Henry Uckert; Archiv der evangelischen Stiftung Alsterdorf V 220 Fanny Uckert. Michael Wunder/Ingrid Genkel/Harald Jenner, Auf dieser schiefen Ebene gibt es kein Halten mehr …. Die Alsterdorfer Anstalten im Nationalsozialismus, Stuttgart 2016, S. 331-371 (Transport nach Wien); Susanne Mende, Die Wiener Heil- und Pflegeanstalt "Am Steinhof" im Nationalsozialismus, Frankfurt/Main 2000.