Hahnöfersand correctional facility

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Information about the institution
Surname	Hahnöfersand JVA
Reference year	1913
Detention places	Young people: 211, women: 69
Employee	170 (110 in prison service)
Institution management	Peter Vetter (in office since May 2016)

The Hahnöfersand correctional facility is located on the Elbe island Hahnöfersand near Jork in Lower Saxony. It includes the juvenile detention center, the juvenile detention center and the prison for women of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.

history

In 1911 the island was handed over to the Hamburg prison administration and in 1913 the first prisoners were brought to Hahnöfersand. At that time they lived in unpaved houses and had the task of making the soil usable by applying silt and clay . In March 1915 this work was continued by 1,200 Russian prisoners of war. 77 prisoners died at that time, probably due to an epidemic .

Christian-Koch-Haus, prison building for young people (architect: Fritz Schumacher )

View into the cell of a 14-year-old prisoner on remand in the old building (2007)

View from the cell of a 14-year-old prisoner on remand in the old building (2007)

View into an unoccupied cell for juvenile inmates in one of the newer buildings (criminal detention)

The juvenile detention center was founded on June 20, 1920. The law that regulated separate juvenile detention came into force three years later. The co-founder and head of the Hamburg penal institutions Christian Koch ( DDP ) pursued an educational reform approach with the establishment of the institution . The young people should be encouraged and educated and not just locked away and drilled. The educational reform experiments practiced by Curt Bondy and Walter Herrmann in this context are still considered to be “groundbreaking” today. The architect Fritz Schumacher designed the first buildings for the juvenile detention center in 1926–1929, which are still used today for the prison system.

time of the nationalsocialism

During the time of National Socialism , the reform-oriented approach was pushed back and instead resorted to a penal system with military drill. From 1940 the prisoners were transferred to other institutions in Hamburg and the area was used for a flak unit to protect industry on the then Elbe island of Finkenwerder .

post war period

Immediately after the end of the Second World War , the island became a prison for teenagers and young adults again. What was new was the open execution , which also allowed privileges such as visits to celebrations at home. The inmates were mainly used for agriculture, but they also had the opportunity to train as a carpenter, bricklayer and other manual professions.

In 1976 Hahnöfersand was diked as part of flood protection measures and connected to the mainland with a dam and a road. Since then, the poor accessibility of the prison island by public transport has repeatedly been the subject of criticism, as there is only a rare bus connection. This applies not only to visitors to prisoners, but also to the inmates of youth arrest, who during their stay there have to continue to drive from the island to their regular school, their training company or their place of work and thus have to cope with journeys of more than two hours. The then MP Alexander-Martin Sardina addressed the problem several times in the state parliament and, after visiting the site and in cooperation with the prison management, advocated improvements.

In 1997, a closed prison for women was added to the prison complex in two separate buildings. In 2002, the prison made headlines for its under-staffing. Since 2004 the youth detention center of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg has also been located as a separate new building within the prison complex; the previous location at the Wandsbek district court no longer met the requirements for hygiene, safety and accommodation.

After the closure of the Hahnöfersand correctional facility had been under discussion for a long time, the plans for a new correctional facility in Hamburg-Billwerder were concretized in July 2019 , which should completely take over Hahnöfersand's tasks by 2027.

Constitutional status of the prison

The detention center is on Lower Saxony territory (in the Borstel district of the Jork municipality ). Hamburg is only the owner of the site under civil law, so that the state law of Lower Saxony generally applies on the site. Notwithstanding this, Hamburg and Lower Saxony have in an administrative agreement of 12./14. January 2010 agreed that Hamburg prison staff are entitled to perform the necessary official acts on the premises of the Hahnöfersand prison and that the Hamburg prison regulations and the Hamburg Passive Smoker Protection Act apply on the premises of the Hahnöfersand prison . The agreement entered into force on August 1, 2010. If the inmates are of legal age, they are entitled to vote in the relevant municipal, district and state elections in Lower Saxony, since the location of the detention center is the primary residence under registration law .

Others

The museum on Hahnöfersand, which is not open to the public

The island has a cemetery which also houses 77 Russian prisoners of war who died of scurvy and dysentery during the First World War . There is also a museum. Due to their location within the prison complex, the cemetery and museum are not accessible to the public.

For his novel Deutschstunde, Siegfried Lenz has chosen a fictional (but based on Hahnöfersand) neighboring island as one of the settings for the framework plot. The novel gives an impression of life in the penal institution after the end of the war.

The prison is also briefly the setting in Hark Bohm's film North Sea is Mordsee from 1976. The two young protagonists Uwe and Dschingis flee from home in a sailing boat and accidentally dock on the island.

The TV film Bittere Truths from the ZDF series Stubbe - From Case to Case is mainly set in the Hahnöfersand prison (first broadcast: December 22, 2007).

literature

Walter Herrmann: The Hamburg youth prison Hahnöfersand: a report on educational work in the penal system . In collaboration with Curt Bondy , Mannheim 1926 (2nd edition), new edition with a foreword by Klaus Eyferth and an addendum by Jörg Ziegenspeck. Lüneburg 1997 (Writings-Study-Documents on Adventure Education, Vol. 17)
Karlheinz Ohle (manuscript and pictures): Hahnöfersand. History and information on youth prison . Hamburg judicial authority in cooperation with the Hamburg State Press Room (publisher), Hamburg 1989.
Kurt Stypmann: Hahnöfersand - The island through the ages .
Offense number 69 . In: The time . No. 29/1998.

Web links

Commons : Hahnöfersand correctional facility - collection of images, videos and audio files

Information about Hahnöfersand ( PDF ; 3.85 MB) from the Hamburg penal authority
Hahnöfersand Museum (private site)

Individual evidence

^ Ohle: Hahnöfersand, p. 6

↑ Christine Dörner: Education through punishment. The history of the juvenile prison system from 1871–1945 . Weinheim and Munich 1991, p. 93; see. also Ohle: Hahnöfersand, p. 10

^ Ohle: Hahnöfersand , p. 10.

^ Ohle: Hahnöfersand , p. 3

↑ Printed matter 18/7307 of the Hamburg Citizenship: Request to optimize the accessibility of the Hamburg penal institutions and youth arrest on Hahnöfersand by public transport from November 7, 2007 by MP Alexander-Martin Sardina and parliamentary group. Unanimously adopted by the Hamburg citizenship in the plenary session on November 21, 2007 (see plenary minutes 18/94, page 5009C).