Anna-Luisen-Stift (Bad Blankenburg)

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The Anna-Luisen-Stift is a Protestant monastery in Bad Blankenburg ( Thuringia ), which for decades was under the direction of deaconesses from the Deaconess Mother House in Eisenach .

history

The plant, which today is particularly successful in the treatment of autistic disorders, was an orphanage until the end of the Second World War . As such, it was like before the centenary of the pen rediscovered coffin invoices from the period 1920 - 1945 auswiesen, in those years a place of child abuse and murder of over 300 children.

The research showed that the two responsible heads of the monastery, the deaconess Ida Cyliax († October 1945) and Frieda Lätzsch, systematically practiced torture and manslaughter on their protégés , albeit free of ideology . Not the emerging idea of ​​“ euthanasia ” and the so-called “life unworthy of life” of the National Socialists , but the economic advantage and the opportunity seemed to have induced the two sisters to cruelly torture, beat, starve and bleed hundreds of children over the years .

These ordeals are believed to have started shortly after 1920, but were only discovered after the monastery was evacuated in 1941. But even the request of the investigating Nazi doctors Albrecht and Kloos , whose state hospital in Stadtroda itself carried out euthanasia measures to remove the monastery directors, did not get through. The lack of interest in this may also be explained by the fact that the monastery supplied a large number of relatives of the sisters as well as local residents through a lively black market in the food and other goods intended for the children.

Not only did the two leaders secure themselves materially in this way, but also the monastery as such, as one of the few diaconal institutions, made profits, and so Pastor Gerhard Phieler, responsible head of the Inner Mission in Thuringia, praised the sisters of the monastery for their “self-sacrificing Christian service to others”.

They were only stopped at the end of the war. Up to then 300 children and infants were known to have been killed by the deaconesses .

literature

  • Anna-Luisen-Stift Bad Blankenburg 1901-2001 ; ed. vd Ev. Christopherushof Foundation, Bad Blankenburg 2001
  • Jürgen Wollmann, Christoph Schellenberger, Karolin Schulz, Ilka Hesse: LEBENSWERT - Working aid for youth work - Draft of a peace prayer for September 1st, 2009 Evangelical Church in Central Germany 2009 (online as: PDF 40 pages 370 kB , with further links and references, accessed on September 22, 2010)

Web links

Coordinates: 50 ° 41 ′ 7.8 "  N , 11 ° 15 ′ 17.5"  E