Friedrich Lensch

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Friedrich Karl Lensch (born August 10, 1898 in Neu Galmsbüll , Schleswig-Holstein Province , Kingdom of Prussia , † January 5, 1976 in Hamburg ) was a German Lutheran clergyman and director of the Alsterdorfer institutes at the time of National Socialism .

Life until National Socialism

The pastor's son Lensch lived in Elmshorn from 1910 and, after graduating from high school in 1917, began studying theology at the University of Marburg . In the final phase of the First World War he had to interrupt his studies and was still deployed on the Eastern Front in 1918 . After the end of the war he continued his theology studies at the universities of Halle , Tübingen and Kiel . On November 11, 1923 he was ordained in Kiel and was then provincial vicar in Preetz . From the beginning of July 1924 he worked for three years as a seaman's pastor in northern England and from the end of August 1927 as a seaman's pastor in Hamburg. At the beginning of June 1930 he became pastor of the St. Nicolaus Church , which is the church of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten. When a new director of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten was sought in mid-September 1930, he was not the preferred candidate for the board. But since all other people asked refused, he was appointed to succeed Paul Stritter as director and remained in this position until the beginning of October 1945. Lensch was politically conservative and rejected the Weimar Republic . Therefore, he also became a member of the Military Association helmet of anti-Republican, anti-Semitic and foreign policy revenge for the defeat in the First World War thoughtful DNVP .

Nazi era

After the seizure of power , Lensch joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) as a result of the transfer of the steel helmet and achieved the rank of Oberscharführer in this Nazi organization . He was also a member of the German Labor Front (DAF) and the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV). Lensch tried to have his company cooperate well with the National Socialists. For this, the Alsterdorfer Anstalten was awarded the Gau diploma for an exemplary company in 1941.

Lensch advocated compulsory sterilization according to the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring and also approved this for inmates of the Alsterdorf institutions. The Nazi doctor and psychiatrist Gerhard Kreyenberg, who had been working in Alsterdorf since 1928, and later Lensch's deputy, was responsible as an expert at the Hamburg Hereditary Health Court for the selection of people to be sterilized. Alsterdorf's patients were his first victims in 1933.

Lensch's attitude towards his patients was reflected in a new mural above the altar, largely designed by Lensch in 1938, during the renovation of St. Nicolaus Church on the grounds of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten. The picture shows Jesus on the cross and 15 people gathered around him. Twelve of these people wear a halo, three don't. Among the twelve people are John the Baptist, Martin Luther and Pastor Lensch himself. The three people without a halo are people with disabilities. Michael Wunder , the prison management and other critical observers have interpreted this since 1987 in such a way that basically for Lensch people with disabilities, i.e. his patients, did not belong to the community. They were portrayed as inferior and were outside the group of full-fledged church members. The National Socialist ideology emerged clearly behind this altar portrait. Lensch and his National Socialist friends said that “keeping the race pure and raising mankind”, both ideas propagated by Lensch, were steps on the way to the “extermination and annihilation” of the weak propagated by Hitler and thus only a preliminary stage to the “final solution” unaware. This picture was a problem for the residents of Alsterdorf for many years, so it was imposed for a long time. On February 4, 2020, the Alsterhaus Foundation announced that the mural with the wall would be removed from the church. The picture is supposed to be the core of a documentation center on National Socialism, which the Hamburg Senate generously subsidizes.

From 1938 Lensch took part in the general state Nazi persecution of Jews and, on his own initiative, had 26 mentally handicapped inmates of the Alsterdorf institutions entrusted to him deported from the facility. Some of them have been released home. The majority of these people, however, were accommodated in state care homes - also in Hamburg - that were not equipped for disabled people. Most of these inmates were later murdered in facilities such as the Brandenburg killing center . Lensch justified the deportation of the Jews with the pressure of the tax authorities on the institution to get rid of the Jewish inmates. Michael Wunder and Harald Jenner, the first researchers who researched the behavior of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten during the time of National Socialism in 1986 - long after the end of the Third Reich - considered this a protective claim and accused Lensch of racial anti-Semitism. There was evidence of this in the files. For example, one inmate had been reported:

“… A monster towards his comrades, stubborn and obstinate, disorderly; demanded that the others see him as a Jew and should follow him "or" Has changed recently to his disadvantage, has become more insincere, more disorderly, in everything his Jewish nature came to the fore ... "

The Alsterdorfer Anstalten and its director Lensch were also involved in the killing operations of the National Socialist euthanasia measures as part of the T4 campaign by helping to bring hundreds of inmates to the Nazi killing centers. In the Nazi killing centers, these mentally ill were murdered, starved or died as a result of the administration of lethal drug cocktails. In total, more than 600 people were deported with the help of Lensch and his administration, although Lensch and his subordinates knew of the intention to murder. Of the 630 deported residents, 511 were murdered before the liberation from National Socialism . After the war, Lensch denied having known anything of the murderous nature of the institutions to which he sent his patients.

During the Second World War , Lensch was employed in 1940 with the rank of corporal in the Secret Field Police .

post war period

After the end of the war, Lensch resigned from his post during the British occupation at the end of October 1945 in order to forestall a dismissal. He was denazified in 1945 . His Alsterdorfer successor, Volkmar Herntrich , arranged for him the pastoral position of the Christ Church in Hamburg-Othmarschen , which he held until 1963 to the satisfaction of his community. Immediately after the end of the Nazi regime, there were no criminal proceedings against Lensch. As a preventive measure, Lensch had written a justification about his role in the T4 events, which remained unpublished. At the beginning of the 1950s, Lensch pushed for additional payment of parts of his salary, which he calculated from his much higher salary as the former head of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten. In doing so, he forced a discussion about his role in National Socialism. As a result, disciplinary proceedings were opened against him, but these were silently closed after a while. Because the head of the church office in Kiel, Epha, who was responsible for him, was also deeply involved in the euthanasia murders during the Nazi era as head of the Ricklinger institutes of the state association for internal mission . Later, under the impression of the Heyde-Sawade affair , the public began to be more interested in the role of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten in National Socialism. But it was not until 1967 that the Hamburg public prosecutor started investigations against Lensch following a specific complaint from a former patient from Alsterdorf and companion of a transport of inmates to a killing center. In 1973 the 870-page indictment against Lensch for aiding and abetting murder and another accused, the former senior official in the Hamburg health administration Kurt Struve , was ready. The trial against Lensch was not opened because the accused could not be proven to have acted with intent. The trial against Struve was discontinued because Struve could assert that in part - although otherwise in good health - he was mentally unable to cope with this process, according to the prosecutor, Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, in a book contribution in 1984. The management of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten also boycotted the cooperation with the public prosecutors and withheld important information from them.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harald Jenner: Friedrich Lensch and the Alsterdorfer Anstalten 1930-1945 . In Michael miracle ; Ingrid Genkel; Harald Jenner: There's no stopping this inclined plane - The Alsterdorfer Anstalten under National Socialism. Ed .: Board of Directors of Alsterdorfer Anstalten Rudi Mondry, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-7600-04-55-5 , p. 133.
  2. ↑ Magazine of the Evangelical Foundation Alsterdorf No. 25/2013, page 10
  3. ^ A b Victoria Overlack: Between national awakening and niche existence: Evangelical life in Hamburg 1933–1945 , Dölling and Galitz Verlag, 2007, p. 453.
  4. ↑ a b Bodo Schümann: After the destruction. Dealing with people with disabilities in Hamburg's politics and society. 1945 to 1970 , Münster 2018, p. 51
  5. ↑ a b Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 366.
  6. ↑ Stephan Linck: " No report". How the church in Altona came to terms with the Nazi past and its relationship to Judaism after 1945. Ed .: Kirchenkreis Altona, Hohenzollernring 22, 22763 Hamburg, 2006, p. 31.
  7. ↑ Michael Wunder: The career of Dr. Kreyenberg - Healing and Destroying in Alsterdorf . Michael miracle ; Ingrid Genkel; Harald Jenner: There's no stopping this inclined plane - The Alsterdorfer Anstalten under National Socialism. Ed .: Board of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten Rudi Mondry, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-7600-04-55-5 , p. 113.
  8. ^ Benjamin Hein: Subject index. City of Hamburg, accessed on February 16, 2020 .
  9. ^ Ingrid Genkel: Pastor Lensch - an example of political theology. In Michael Wunder , Ingrid Genkel, Harald Jenner: There is no stopping this inclined plane - The Alsterdorfer Anstalten under National Socialism , Ed. Board of Directors of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten Rudi Mondry, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-7600-04-55-5 , p 77.
  10. ↑ Peter Wenig: Spectacular: Church moves wall in memory of Nazi victims. In: Hamburger Abendblatt . February 4, 2020, accessed February 16, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b Bodo Schümann: After the destruction. Dealing with people with disabilities in Hamburg's politics and society. 1945 to 1970 , Münster 2018, p. 52
  12. ↑ Michael Wunder, Harald Jenner: The fate of the Jewish residents of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten . Michael miracle ; Ingrid Genkel; Harald Jenner: There's no stopping this inclined plane - The Alsterdorfer Anstalten under National Socialism. Ed .: Board of Directors of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten Rudi Mondry, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-7600-04-55-5 , pp. 155–167.
  13. ↑ Michael Wunder, Harald Jenner: The fate of the Jewish residents of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten . Michael miracle ; Ingrid Genkel; Harald Jenner: There's no stopping this inclined plane - The Alsterdorfer Anstalten under National Socialism. Ed .: Board of the Alsterdorfer Anstalten Rudi Mondry, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-7600-04-55-5 , p. 161.
  14. ↑ Rudy Mondry: Foreword. Michael miracle ; Ingrid Genkel; Harald Jenner: There's no stopping this inclined plane - The Alsterdorfer Anstalten under National Socialism. Ed .: Board of Directors of Alsterdorfer Anstalten Rudi Mondry, Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-7600-04-55-5 , p. 7.
  15. ^ Benjamin Hein on the Hamburg homepage NS_Dabeigewesene.
  16. ↑ Bodo Schümann: After the destruction. Dealing with people with disabilities in Hamburg's politics and society. 1945 to 1970 , Münster 2018, p. 54
  17. ↑ Stephan Linck: " No report". How the church in Altona came to terms with the Nazi past and its relationship to Judaism after 1945. Ed .: Kirchenkreis Altona, Hohenzollernring 22, 22763 Hamburg, 2006, p. 33.
  18. ↑ Dietrich Kuhlbrodt: Relocated to ... and killed - the institutional killings in Hamburg . In: Angelika Ebbinghaus; Heidrun Kaupen-Haas; Karl-Heinz Roth (ed.): Healing and destroying in the model district Hamburg - population and health policy in the Third Reich . Konkret Literatur Verlag, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-922144-41-1 , p. 160.
  19. ↑ Stephan Linck: " No report". How the church in Altona came to terms with the Nazi past and its relationship to Judaism after 1945. Ed .: Kirchenkreis Altona, Hohenzollernring 22, 22763 Hamburg, 2006, p. 35.
personal data
SURNAME Lensch, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lensch, Friedrich Karl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Lutheran clergyman and director of the Alsterdorfer institutes
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH New Galmsbüll
DATE OF DEATH 5th January 1976
Place of death Hamburg