Fritz Nobody

Fritz Nobody (born December 16, 1915 in Kiel ; † November 21, 2012 in Rendsburg ) was a German administrative clerk and a victim of National Socialist eugenics .

Life

Origin and family

Fritz Nobody was born to the couple Fritz Nobody and Hedwig Nobody, née Lorenzen. His father died in April 1918 in the service as a navigation officer on a submarine of the Imperial Navy . He left two daughters in addition to the son. The fatherless family spent their early childhood in Luhnstedt and Nindorf .

Educational pathway and working life

Fritz Nobody spent his school days at the village school in Nindorf and from 1925 as a result of moving to Rendsburg. There he attended Christian-Timm-Realschule from 1926 to 1932. During his school days he occasionally stuttered.

Three consecutive attempts to complete training in Garding , Rendsburg and Osterrönfeld failed. From October 1932 to February 1934 Fritz Nobody tried his hand at the merchant navy as a cabin boy . A voluntary labor service followed from February to June 1934 . In July 1934 he joined the Reichsmarine after having been committed for four years. Due to exhaustion and refusal to give orders , he was admitted to a naval hospital in November 1934 and dismissed as unfit for duty in February 1935 .

From February 1940 Fritz Nobody worked as a warehouse worker and driver for a Rendsburg grocery wholesaler. From November 1941 he settled in Lockstedter camp for Schlosser retrain . After passing the theoretical exam, he switched to further training at the Kiel Navy Shipyard. From there he was in December 1942 for the installation of turrets to Norway reassigned. As a result of a notification of illness caused by physical and mental stress, Fritz Nobody was sent back to Germany in May 1943, and the accompanying medical certificate resulted in his discharge. In Rendsburg he found employment in the Carlshütte , which he soon gave up due to a depressive mood . After a ten-week stay in the clinic, he moved to Hamburg at the end of 1943 to work at a HAPAG repair yard .

At the beginning of 1945 Fritz Nobody worked again at short notice for the Rendsburg grocery wholesaler that had already employed him years ago. From February 1948 to June 1949 he traded haberdashery on an outpatient basis . In the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, various industrial and commercial activities alternated with periods of unemployment. After successfully attending a private commercial vocational school from October 1965 to September 1966, Fritz Nobody worked for various employers until he took up a position in the church office of the Rendsburg parish on June 1, 1969 , which he held until his retirement at the end of 1980.

Persecution in National Socialist Germany

A Nazi health worker who lived as a subtenant with his mother suggested an examination in the sanatorium and nursing home in Schleswig-Stadtfeld in 1935 . Fritz Nobody protested against these plans with words that the welfare worker interpreted as a threat of violence. In September 1935, he was admitted to the Schleswig- Stadtfeld state hospital against his will . His forced stay there lasted almost four and a half years. During this time, no one was treated with electric shocks , among other things . Two escape attempts each failed after a few hours. In June 1936 he was forcibly sterilized and the operation took place in the Schleswig city hospital. The doctor's diagnosis was schizophrenia . The legal basis of this measure was the corresponding decision of a hereditary health court , which referred to the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring , which had been in force since January 1, 1934 . Since Fritz Nobody was not yet of legal age in June 1936, his mother's consent was necessary, which was obtained through psychological pressure. In February 1940 Fritz Nobody was released from the institution after intense pressure from his mother.

In November 1943, nobody in Hamburg contacted a resident neurologist because of exhaustion and anxiety . This initiated the admission to the psychiatry and nervous clinic of the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf . On December 8th he was transferred to the Hamburg-Langenhorn intermediate facility. From there, on February 1, 1944, they were transported to the Obrawalde sanatorium , an extermination facility for sick people who were “unable to work”. He survived there, also with the help of a deaconess . In the turmoil shortly before the arrival of the Red Army , nobody fled in January 1945 and finally reached Rendsburg via Frankfurt (Oder) , Berlin and Hamburg.

Conflicts over Nazi persecution

His persecution remained a taboo subject within his family for decades.

His applications for recognition as a persecuted person and victim of National Socialism failed with the indication that “hereditary health measures” did not constitute persecution. On the basis of the General Law on Consequences of War , he received a one-off compensation payment of DM 5,000 from a hardship fund in 1981.

In 1986 the Kiel District Court found that the 1936 decision of the Hereditary Health Court on sterilization was unlawful. Fritz Nobody was able to obtain recognition as a persecuted person within the meaning of the Federal Compensation Act , neither in court nor through the Petitions Committee of the German Bundestag or the Petitions Committee of the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag .

Contemporary witness

After the death of his mother, Fritz Nobody appeared frequently as a contemporary witness , addressing his fate and that of the euthanasia victims. His audience included students and teachers at general education schools, prospective community service students, nursing students and teachers, and university lecturers and students. He also appeared as a victim, contemporary witness and expert , including before a technical committee of the Hamburg citizenship and the interior committee of the German Bundestag . On April 17, 1985, he was the focus of a joint broadcast by Norddeutscher Rundfunk , Radio Bremen and Sender Free Berlin in the third television program on euthanasia in the Third Reich . The television magazine Kennzeichen D also dedicated an article to him on January 7, 1986.

memory

The Fritz-Nobody-Haus shared apartment in Rendsburg has existed since 2014 , an offer for people with dementia .

literature

• Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life of Fritz Nobody , Paranus Verlag , Neumünster 2004, ISBN 978-3-926200-60-0 .
• Michael Wunder: The transports to the Meseritz-Obrawalde sanatorium . In: Peter von Röhn, Klaus Böhme, Uwe Lohalm (eds.): Paths to death. Hamburg's Langenhorn Institute and euthanasia in the time of National Socialism , Results Verlag, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-87916-406-1 , pp. 377–396, especially pp. 390–394.
• Günter Neugebauer : biography of the victim Fritz Nobody. In: Against forgetting. Victims and perpetrators in Rendsburg's Nazi era , pp. 361–370. Rendsburg printing and publishing house, Osterrönfeld 2018, ISBN 978-3-9810912-6-7 .

Web links

• Inga Hehnen: A life that was considered worthless , in: Eckernförder Zeitung , December 17, 2012 (accessed on August 18, 2015).
• Fritz Nobody - A Forcibly Sterilized Person from Schleswig-Holstein , contemporary witness interview, produced on behalf of the House of History , available on the website of the Distance University in Hagen (accessed onAugust 18, 2015).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Announcement from Paranus Verlag (accessed on August 18, 2015).
2. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , pp. 10–12.
3. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , pp. 12-19.
4. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , pp. 23-27.
5. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , pp. 51–57.
6. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , p. 85 f.
7. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , p. 95, p. 130.
8. ↑ On this, Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , pp. 130-133.
9. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , pp. 133-136.
10. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , pp. 28–38.
11. ↑ On this intermediate institution see the cursory information in Herbert Dierck's "Euthanasia". The murders of people with disabilities and mental illnesses in Hamburg under National Socialism. Texts, photos and documents. Published by the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial . Hamburg 2014 (PDF, accessed August 19, 2015). Comprehensive: Peter von Röhn, Klaus Böhme, Uwe Lohalm (eds.): Paths to death. Hamburg's Langenhorn institution and euthanasia during the Nazi era. Results Verlag, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-87916-406-1 .
12. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life of Fritz Nobody. Pp. 56-67.
13. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , p. 89 and more.
14. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , pp. 89-102.
15. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , pp. 126–128.
16. ↑ Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life path of Fritz Nobody , pp. 148–151.
17. ↑ On no man's public appearances, see Horst Illiger: “Don't talk about it!” The life of Fritz Nobody. Pp. 167-184.
18. ^ Klaus Goldinger: Unworthy of life? (2). “Euthanasia” in the Third Reich (1985).
19. ↑ North German Newsletter for Residential Care Communities, No. 17, June 2014 (PDF, accessed on August 19, 2015); Information from the care provider ( memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on this shared apartment (accessed on August 19, 2015).