Leni Timm
* 1932

Leni Timm, born 11.2.1932 in Altona, transferred in 1937 from the Auguste Viktoria Foundation – Ottenser Krippe to the former Alsterdorf Asylum (‘Alsterdorfer Anstalten’, now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf), deported 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’) in Vienna, died there on 12.12.1944

Wiesenacker 20 (formerly Wiesengrund) (Eidelstedt)

Leni Martha Hildegard Timm was born on 11 February 1932 in the Altona Municipal Maternity Hospital, Bülowstraße 9. Her parents were Erna Anna Timm, born on 9 July 1911 in Recklinghausen, and Ernst Buksch, born on 1 June 1890 in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad. The mother was a domestic servant, the father an unemployed potter. The child was born out of wedlock.

Leni Timm did not live with her mother. For the first two years of her life, the girl was cared for by Anna Georgine Dorothea Buksch, the wife of her biological father. The Buksch couple lived at Wiesengrund 32 (now Wiesenacker) in Eidelstedt. Leni Timm had an official guardian from the Altona Youth Welfare Office. An adoption by the father ‘failed due to the bad behaviour of the father towards his family’. Anna Buksch then took Leni to foster parents on 10 August 1934. The girl could not yet speak and was ‘mentally retarded’.

The foster parents, Marie Fock, born on 20 October 1886, and Karl Fock, born on 19 May 1890, lived at Wiesengrund 20 in a small garden house on their own property. They had no children. It is clear from the excerpts from the care file that Leni was very fond of her foster parents. Her physical development was described as good, but her speech was slurred and her mental development was making slow progress. The foster parents were also very fond of Leni and the child ‘seemed to be coming into her own’.

After Erna Timm had taken little care of her daughter in Leni's early years, she visited her child more often with the Fock foster family.

In February 1937, Leni was admitted to the Auguste Viktoria Foundation – Ottenser Krippe, Flottbeker Chaussee 88 (today Elbchaussee). We do not know the reason for this. On 1 March, she fell ill with scarlet fever and was admitted to the Altona Children's Hospital, Tresckowallee 38 (now Bleickenallee). The doctors diagnosed her with physical and mental weakness and that she was not suitable for private care.

In the extract from Leni Timm's care file, the girl was described in the summer of 1937 as a slight, underweight and too small child. She was considerably handicapped in her locomotion and showed ‘severe imbecility’. It was recommended that she should be transferred to the Alsterdorf Asylum.

On 2 August 1937, Leni was admitted to what was then the Alsterdorf Asylum (‘Alsterdorfer Anstalten’, now Evangelische Stiftung Alsterdorf) with a diagnosis of ‘imbecility’ (an outdated and derogatory term for intellectual disability).
A letter from the biological mother reveals that she was unaware of the transfer and had not been asked for her consent.

The medical records of the Alsterdorf Asylum refer to the period from August 1937 to June 1943. At the beginning, Leni was said to make a ‘lovely, friendly, somewhat mischievous impression’, to speak quietly and clearly, to eat alone and cleanly at all meals and to indicate her needs. However, she fell ill with chickenpox and angina in her first month and was repeatedly transferred to the infirmary over the six years of her stay in the Alsterdorf Asylum, very often with angina, fever and flu-like infections, but also with measles, rubella and bronchitis. In July 1940, she had to undergo an operation due to severe swelling behind her left ear.

Leni Timm attended the play school in the Alsterdorf Asylum. At the beginning, the staff observed that she enjoyed attending and liked playing with building blocks, for example. In later comments from the play school, a change became clear and Leni was described as increasingly apathetic. She no longer indicated her needs, wet herself and soiled herself and ‘does not react to punishments’.

During the heavy air raids on Hamburg at the end of July/beginning of August 1943 (‘Operation Gomorrah’), the Alsterdorf Asylum also suffered bomb damage. The head 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 ‘weak in labour, in need of care or particularly difficult’ by transporting them to other sanatoriums and nursing homes. On 16 August 1943, one of these transports ‘transferred’ 228 women and girls from Alsterdorf and 72 girls and women from the Langenhorn sanatorium and nursing home to Vienna to the ‘Wagner von Jauregg – Curative and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna’ (also known as the ‘Am Steinhof’ institution). Leni Timm was among them

Leni Timm's medical records at the ‘Am Steinhof’ institution show that she weighed only 24 kg when she was admitted. (According to current weight tables, 11-year-old girls weigh 43 kg on average). Her weight did not change until her death. When she was admitted, it was stated that she was ‘quiet, bedridden and in need of care’. In September 1944, a doctor certified that she was ‘unfit for education’.

On 6 December 1944, the entry stated that Leni Timm was very pale and coughed. Allegedly because of ‘suspected TB’, she was transferred to Pavilion 19, often the last and only brief stay of the patients before their death. Leni Timm allegedly died of pulmonary tuberculosis on 12 December 1944 at 7.30 pm.

The chief physician/pathologist Barbara Uiberrak, who had been working at the Vienna-Steinhof Sanatorium and Nursing Home since 1938, carried out a post-mortem on the body the following day, examining the brain in particular, but also the lungs, heart, liver, spleen and kidneys. The Viennese historian Peter Schwarz found ‘never a description of the (poor) external condition of a corpse’ in her autopsy findings, contrary to general custom. Whether organs were removed for pseudo-scientific purposes is not noted in the brief post-mortem report on Leni Timm.

From 1943 onwards, the brains of around half of all dissected corpses were removed for histological examination and some were kept in the brain anatomy collection. Until 2002, the Vienna Institute still possessed 700 brains that had been removed during dissections.

The ‘Wagner von Jauregg- Curative and Nursing Home of the City of Vienna’ had been an intermediate institution of the Hartheim killing centre near Linz during ‘Aktion-T4’ (the name for the National Socialists' ‘Euthanasia” programme, named after the location of the Berlin ‘Euthanasia centre’ at Tiergartenstraße 4). After the official end of the euthanasia murders in the killing centres in August 1941, the killings continued en masse in the previous intermediate institutions and also in the Vienna institution itself: through overdoses of medication and non-treatment of illnesses, but above all through food deprivation.

By the end of 1945, 257 of the 300 girls and women in Hamburg had died, 196 of whom came from Alsterdorf.

Translation: Ingo Wille