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Dr. Carl Lorenzen
© Privatbesitz Lorenzen

Dr. Carl Lorenzen * 1889

Bramfelder Chaussee 269 (Wandsbek, Bramfeld)

Verhaftet 1938
KZ Fuhlbüttel
Flucht in den Tod
06.02.1938

Dr. med. Eduard Friedrich Carl Lorenzen, born on 27 Oct. 1889 in Schiffbek, died on 6 Feb. 1938 in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp as a result of suicide

Bramfelder Chaussee 269 (Lübecker Strasse 11)

Not much is known about the fate of Dr. med. Carl Lorenzen. The physician was born on 27 Oct. 1889 in Schiffbek, today Hamburg-Billstedt, as the son of the master painter H. Lorenzen and his wife Maria, née Westphalen. He set himself up as a physician in Bramfeld after the First World War. Initially, he had his doctor’s office at Hamburger Strasse 221 and then, after his marriage in Bramfeld to Carola Bertha Siemers (12 Feb. 1899 –28 Mar. 1993) in 1921, relocated to Lübecker Strasse 11. The marriage produced two children.

He married into the old-established Siemers family of Bramfeld, who had their farmstead in the center of the village. In 1966, the farm was torn down to make room for construction of the Karstadt department store. Herthastrasse in the center of Bramfeld was named after Hertha Siemers – Carola’s twin sister.

As a registered doctor in private practice, Carl Lorenzen was also responsible for providing school doctor’s services to the school then located at today’s Bramfeld village square. So far, it has been impossible to clarify how it came about that he was committed as a protective custody prisoner (Schutzhäftling) to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp on charges of "unnatural sex offenses” ("widernatürliche Unzucht”) on 24 Jan. 1938.

After the arrest of Carl Lorenzen, the police officers entered a note in his file, underlined in red, to the effect of "Caution! Suicidal intentions.” On 5 Feb. 1938, he made a suicide attempt in his cell. A prison guard found him with stab wounds to the left of his neck and arranged for his transfer to the camp hospital. On 6 February, Lorenzen died of his injuries. The cause of death officially indicated was "cardiac insufficiency with heavy loss of blood due to stabbing wound to the neck.” Initially, he was buried in Schiffbek. In 1975, at the request of the Siemers family, he was transferred to another grave in the old Bramfeld cemetery.

By committing suicide, Carl Lorenzen eluded the legal proceedings and the imminent revocation of his medical license by the Medical Association. In addition, since July 1934, the procedures for withdrawing a doctoral degree were being simplified. By then, it was sufficient to establish that a graduate was "no longer worthy of holding a doctoral degree awarded by a German university,” with homosexual activities included in the list of grounds for revocation. Thus, he also pre-empted a further degrading measure ruining his livelihood. A Stolperstein in front of his former practice and residential quarters at today’s Bramfelder Chaussee 269 commemorates his fate.


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

Stand: March 2017
© Britta Burmeister, Ulf Bollmann, Bernhard Rosenkranz(†)

Quellen: StaH, 332-5 (Standesämter), 1086, 2214 und 3913; StaH 213-8 (Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung), Abl. 2, 451 a E 1, 1 a; StaH 242-1II (Gefängnisverwaltung II), Abl. 12, Lorenzen; StaH 331-5 (Polizeibehörde – Un­natürliche Sterbefälle), Journal 1938 Band 1 (da­rin: Nr. 321); StaH 352-5 (Gesundheitsbehörde – Todesbescheinigungen), C II 1938, Standesamt 2 Nr. 44; AB 1920–1924; Bernhard Rosen­kranz/Ulf Bollmann/Gottfried Lorenz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung in Hamburg 1919–1969, Hamburg 2009, S. 50–52, 233.

Addendum: Subsequent research results on Dr. Carl Lorenzen

The Bramfeld Stolperstein group was not satisfied with the few details they managed to relate about Carl Lorenzen on the occasion of laying his Stolperstein. In the many interviews on life histories conducted in Bramfeld since 1991, the physician’s name had never been mentioned. A family member, with whom contact had been established, did not wish to talk about the "difficult time,” but had agreed to the laying of a Stolperstein.

We used the laying of the Stolperstein in 2009 to ask for clues about Carl Lorenzen.

In 2011, a former neighbor came forward. She remembered that Dr. Lorenzen had been her family doctor. Her parents had run an inn, and when people talked about him there, the parents would send her outside: "And Edith would then stand in the doorway. That is when I overheard that he had hanged himself. Because he had been in a circle that was not allowed by the Nazis. I cannot say whether they arrested him because he was socializing with someone or because he was merely frequenting such a meeting place. However, there must have been a raid somewhere, that is how I understood it, and they took him away. Then he was in prison, he had a wife and two children. They never told me exactly ...”

Other contemporary witnesses knew nothing about him. In Bramfeld history, Dr. Lorenzen did not seem to have existed.

That was until 2015: In the spring, a grandson of Carl Lorenzen called and arranged an interview, in which his father, Karl Heinz Lorenzen, also participated. In 2016, Karl Heinz Lorenzen’s oldest son also got in touch, providing photos of his grandfather. Finally, Carl Lorenzen also received a face!

Both the grandchildren and the son had never heard of the imprisonment of their father and grandfather, respectively, and the reasons for it.
Karl Heinz Lorenzen: "The happiest time was basically the childhood until the death of my father, (and the most difficult) probably the death of the father.” About his family, he told us: "My mother is a farmer’s daughter and also had the appropriate training and her curriculum vitae. My father was a doctor, but then he died quite early. I was not yet 14 years old. (...) we (have) had a quite harmonious family life together.”

On their wedding day, Carola and Carl Lorenzen received the villa as a gift from Carola’s father, who sold it again after Carl Lorenzen’s death. The widow moved with her two children into the retirement home set aside by the Siemers family on Bramfelder Chaussee. According to the son, the children missed their old home very much.

About his father’s medical practice, the son reported, "It was a real country doctor’s office. There was no emergency service you could call, but at night, the phone would ring, and then my father had to go out. He was not well disposed to being called for trivial things. However, of course that happened sometimes. It was usually arranged in such a way that he had the first two hours of office hours in the morning, and then he took care of one area in the morning – either the northern part of Bramfeld or the southern part up to Hellbrook (for house calls), changing in the afternoon. In the evenings, the office hours continued. Only Wednesday and Saturday afternoons were free. (...) My mother was my father’s assistant during office hours. Above all, she had taken over radiation and other treatments. Thus, she was also employed part-time in that part of the practice.”

The mother had a hard time after the death of her husband, because henceforth she had to support the family. That is why, at the age of 39, she trained as a social worker.

Karl Heinz Lorenzen also described quite unexpected sides of his father: "My father played the piano at an excellent level and he had begun training as an opera singer. However, he was not allowed to perform in public. He was forbidden to do so by his father-in-law, arguing that he was a doctor, after all. As a result, he was only allowed to sing in church. That is what he did. Or he would sing to us children in the evening. I often asked my father to sing again. In the church, he sang solo, as he had training as a soloist, as a bass-baritone. He would have liked to have given other concerts. Per se – well, he was certainly not a bad doctor, he was a good doctor – but he was more of an artist. That would probably have suited him more. But in the old days, a lot of importance was attached to the word of the parents or parents-in-law.” Father-in-law Siemers had been a conservative big farmer and municipal administrator in Bramfeld.

In 2016, the older Lorenz grandson also confirmed that in his childhood the grandfather’s death was not talked about. He only knew that "he died of heart failure at some point on the way from there to there.” And his father had apparently added, "It’s obvious, he did get so heavy after all.”

The grandson was very grateful for the fact that he now sees his family history in a completely new light and that his grandfather has been commemorated with a Stolperstein in Bramfeld.

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

Stand: May 2021
© Ulrike Hoppe

Quellen: Stadtteilarchiv Bramfeld, Interview Edith Fleck, 27.5.2011 / Interview Erika Beit, 18.2.2014 / Interview Karl Heinz Lorenzen, 29.4.2015 / Interview Klaus Peter Lorenzen, 13.5.2017