Paul Lüben
* 1904

Paul Lüben, born on 4 Aug. 1904 in Schleswig, detention in 1939 in the Fuhlsbüttel and Glasmoor prisons, suicide on 5 Apr. 1940 in Hamburg

Klaus-Groth-Strasse 16

The journeyman tailor Paul Robert Adolf Lüben was also among the persecuted persons whose biographies were destroyed along with the criminal justice records. Only a police file on “unnatural deaths” of the criminal investigation department and a prisoner file card contain any clues about his fate.

Paul Lüben was born in Schleswig on 4 Aug. 1904. His father, Theodor Lüben, was a leaseholder of several hotels and restaurants in Schleswig, moving to Altona with his wife Anna, née Heckt, and four children in 1905.

Due to homosexual contacts, Paul Lüben was caught in the clutches of the criminal investigation department. He served a one-and-a-half-year prison sentence in the Glasmoor penitentiary. According to a preserved prisoner file card, Paul Lüben was in pretrial detention because of “unnatural sex offenses” (“widernatürliche Unzucht”) from 21 Feb. until 5 May 1939, and this was followed, after a conviction in May 1939, by prison terms in Fuhlsbüttel and from 31 Aug. 1939 onward in Glasmoor. After his release from prison, Paul Lüben lived at Klaus-Groth-Strasse 16 as a subtenant. His last workplace was with the Reuss & Küstner Company on Caffamacherreihe.

On 5 Apr. 1940, Paul Lüben was found dead by his landlady. He had hanged himself with a rope tied to the lamp hook in his room. That same day, he had been scheduled to report for interrogation as an accused to the 24th Office of the Criminal Investigation Department (24. Kriminalkommissariat) of the Hamburg police, responsible for homosexual offenses.
The only relative indicated in the files was a sister named Else, married name Baur, living in Hopfen near Füssen/Allgäu.

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