Ruth Pappenheimer

Stumbling block for Ruth Pappenheimer Frankfurt am Main, Kriftelerstraße 103a

Ruth Pappenheimer (born November 8, 1925 in Frankfurt am Main , † October 20, 1944 in Idstein ) was a victim of the Nazi regime . She was murdered on the Idsteiner Kalmenhof .

In the Kalmenhof trial , which was conducted at the Frankfurt Regional Court in 1946/1947 against (among others) the doctor Hermann Wesse and the Kalmenhof nursing staff, the murder of Ruth Pappenheimer had an exemplary impact on the course of the trial.

Life

Ruth Pappenheimer was the daughter of the merchant Julius Pappenheimer, born on March 5, 1892 in Dornheim (Hesse) . The registration files show that he was of a Jewish denomination. Her mother Martha (née Noll-Hussong), who was born on October 20, 1897 and died on March 6, 1933, was Protestant. Ruth Pappenheimer was therefore considered to be a "half-Jew" by the Nazi regime. At the time of the census in the German Reich in 1939 , Ruth Pappenheimer was registered at Krifteler Strasse 103 in Frankfurt am Main.

After her mother's death, Ruth Pappenheimer grew up with her grandmother in Frankfurt am Main (Gallusviertel). If you believe the information in the welfare file, she is said to have attracted attention several times due to misconduct. For example, she “spoiled many children” at school. She is said to have falsified a testimony that was bad as a result of various misconducts of which she was charged in order to hide the incident from her grandparents. The relationship with her grandmother, who was a supporter of NS, deteriorated drastically in the course of adolescence, especially since she was prejudiced against her granddaughter because of her origins from a Jewish father. While completing her compulsory year with a Frankfurt family who were staunch National Socialists and aware of their family circumstances, she is said to have been discovered stealing "a few bottles of wine" and a "men's woolen scarf", whereupon she was dismissed without notice. No evidence was presented for the alleged misconduct, and the employer did not file a complaint. Nevertheless, the incidents and alleged misconduct of Ruth Pappenheimer were taken as an opportunity by the Frankfurt Youth Welfare Office, which conforms to the Nazi ideology, to expel the 16-year-old into welfare education. The authorities suppressed a benevolent assessment of their class teacher and did not submit it to the district court.

By order of the Frankfurt am Main District Court on April 16, 1941, the (minor) Ruth Pappenheimer was initially given over to the final welfare education by order of July 29, 1941, as "neglect" was threatened. The court files and the welfare files show that Ruth Pappenheimer was assigned to the Camberg home and farm work school with interruptions from April 1941 to October 1944. This Nazi facility was installed from 1937 to 1945 in what is now the Freiherr von Schütz School . There, female underage welfare children were trained according to the Nazi ideology for activities in the house and agriculture. In the meantime, she worked on a farm in Camberg-Weyer and worked as a housemaid for the Nassau district association in the NSV children's and convalescent home at Dehrn Castle . In mid-October 1944 the house was cleared for "Wehrmacht purposes". Ruth Pappenheimer and two other girls from Camberg who were sent there were initially "transferred" to the Idsteiner Kalmenhof on the instructions of the welfare authorities in Wiesbaden (Fritz Bernotat). The accused and later murderer of Ruth Pappenheimer, Hermann Wesse, testified during his judicial interrogation that Ruth Pappenheimer had escaped from her supervisor to Frankfurt on the way from Schloss Dehrn to Idstein and shortly afterwards was "admitted to the institution" by a soldier. During the Nazi era, the Kalmenhof functioned as a " T4 intermediate facility " for the Hadamar killing center . There was also a "children's department" in which children and young people were systematically murdered who were considered "unworthy of life" according to Nazi ideology. On October 16, 1944, the two girls, Anni G. and Gertrud S., who were considered to be "Aryan", were picked up by the head of the Camberg home and farm school. Ruth Pappenheimer stayed at the Idsteiner Kalmenhof, allegedly suffering from "pneumonia". A few days later she was murdered there by administering at least two injections of morphine and scopolamine, while the other two girls were released home from the Camberg school, which was closed after the end of the war.

Assassination by Hermann Wesse

The court files show that the Provincial Councilor Fritz Bernotat “especially campaigned” to force the killing of Ruth Pappenheimer. Hermann Wesse, who had only been active at Idsteiner Kalmenhof for a few months at that time, supported the request of his superior Bernotat with all the means at his disposal and carried out the murder after approval by the T4 central office in Berlin. From the court files: “At 6 o'clock in the evening, Nurse Mu. The Pappenheimer gave another injection of morphine because she would still have responded to the call. Pappenheimer died on October 30, 1944. According to death certificate No. 153/44 of the Idstein registry office, the defendant Wesse stated that the cause of death was bronchopneumia and cardiovascular weakness in the death certificate. The funeral also took place according to statements by witness Ko. and L. in the unworthy manner described. "

The "Pappenheimer case" in the context of the Kalmenhof trial

The case of Ruth Pappenheimer is referred to several times in the court hearing against the doctor Hermann Wesse. In addition to three other victims, Ruth Pappenheimer's murder was an example of the fact that mentally and physically perfectly healthy children and young people were also murdered there if they did not fit into the Nazi racial construct. In the context of the Kalmenhof trial it is reconstructed "fairly exactly" that Ruth Pappenheimer was "mentally completely normal", but according to "the information and opinion of the accused Wesse only ... the anti-social or the character abnormal".

This reprimand was decisive for the process, because in the course of negotiations for homicides in the Nazi system there were repeated attempts to excuse debt by defendants, which not only referred to the right-wing positivist orientation in the Nazi system, but, as Wesse also did, to a lack of orders . In the context of Action T4 , however, if one takes the leadership's decree supposedly legitimizing the systematic killing of mentally and physically handicapped people as a basis, “healthy people” were not affected. In this respect, highlighting the Ruth Pappenheimer case was not an attempt to establish a victim hierarchy between the supposedly “healthy” and “sick” and to value the former more highly. Rather, the procedural focus on Ruth Pappenheimer served the goal of being able to reliably prove to the killing doctor Hermann Wesse (who appealed against the first sentence) that the criteria for the murder were fulfilled in a particularly predestined case. The reasoning for the judgment states accordingly: "The Pappenheimer case was not covered by the decree of September 1, 1939, since this was not a patient."

Problematic interpretation in secondary literature

The decisive facts (see above) of the physical and mental health of the murder victim Ruth Pappenheimer, clearly highlighted by the prosecution for procedural reasons, develops a problematic life of its own in the multiple mentions of the case in the literature and on the Internet, which leads to a scandalization of the Case "Ruth Pappenheimer" in itself, but also a renewed marginalization of the victim. The discrimination that Ruth Pappenheimer experienced during the Nazi era is (unconsciously) repeated in the reception in literature. From welfare and litigation files it becomes clear that Ruth Pappenheimer came into conflict with the law, but also with the rigid morals of the Nazi era (which were primarily laid down for girls and women), which was the cause of the transfer to custody. In the secondary literature on Ruth Pappenheimer, the stereotypes and (incorrect) attributions tinged by Nazi ideology are often adopted, so that the Nazi victim Ruth Pappenheimer is marginalized again. Sick's 1983 investigation does provide a balanced account of the circumstances of the trial as well as the information marked as a rumor without evidence about the alleged "relationship" between the state director Bernotat and the murdered woman. But Sick also refers to "testimony" according to which RP was "extremely beautiful". The fact that these aspects repeatedly emphasized in the literature were irrelevant in the procedural context of the murder of the victim, and that the reference to the "physical and mental health" of the murdered had purely strategic reasons in the sense of the prosecution's success, is not explained causally in the literature distracts significantly from the victim's biography. In one of the more recent publications, the author even develops the thesis of "abuse" of Ruth Pappenheimer by a member of the Kalmenhof Friends' Association without citing any evidence, which means that the crime of institutional, racially motivated murder documented in the files runs the risk of being out of view to guess.

Through the implicit (and one-dimensional) sexual interpretation of the motive for murder (relationship with Bernotat? Abuse?), Which cannot be proven by files, the actual motives for murder, based on the Nazi racial ideology and the interpretation of RP as " anti-social ", are pushed into the background. The boulevard's scandalous view of the "Pappenheimer case" not only distracts from the systematics and structure of the rigid moral and social concept implemented brutally by the Nazi regime (even through destruction), but also prevents an exemplary classification of the murder of Ruth Pappenheimer, whose fate is representative of the many who were victims of the " destruction of life unworthy of life " in Idsteiner Kalmenhof .

Ruth Pappenheimer - Example of the stereotypical pattern of interpretation of the beautiful Jewish woman

The marginalizing attribution of the stereotype of the beautiful Jewess , which runs like a red thread through the intellectual history of the 19th century, is an aspect of historical anti-Judaism . Petra Feldmann described the marginalizing stereotype of the beautiful Jewish woman in an article . In the case of Ruth Pappenheimer, this analysis applies to both the period before and after 1945.

Culture of remembrance

On June 21, 2013 , a stumbling block for Ruth Pappenheimer was laid in front of the house at Krifteler Straße 103 in Frankfurt's Gallusviertel , her last freely chosen place of residence .

swell

• HHStaW trial files Kalmenhof trial Dept. 461 No. 31526 Indictment and trial (1946/1947) against the prison doctor Hermann Wesse
• Institute for City History Frankfurt a. M., Welfare Record 357
• Death certificate Ruth Pappenheimer 153/44 Idstein town archive
• House and agricultural work school Bad Camberg. List of the school's staff (1942) in the Bad Camberg town archive. (StAC XXI 1/15)
• Christiaan Rüter u. a .: Justice and Nazi crimes. Collection of German criminal convictions for Nazi homicide crimes 1945–1999. Volume I (case 014) and III (case 102)

Representations

• Kerstin Freudiger: The legal processing of Nazi crimes , 2002.
• Martina Hartmann-Menz: The Víta Ruth Pappenheimer / Documentation Stolperstein Ruth Pappenheimer , The Synagogue in Dornheim , Alemannia Judaica , 2012
• Lutz Kaelber: Jewish Children with Disabilities and Nazi "Euthanasia" Crimes in: The Bulletin of the Carolyn and Leonard Miller Center for Holocaust Studies. The University of Vermont. Volume 17. Spring 2013
• Peter Sandner: Administration of the murder of the sick. The Nassau District Association under National Socialism. 2003. In it: Reference to the Bad Camberg domestic and agricultural work school.
• Christian Schrapper, Dieter Sengling (Hrsg.): The idea of ​​formability. 100 years of socio-educational practice in the Kalmenhof educational institution. Juventa Verlag, Weinheim / Munich 1988.
• Dorothea Sick: "Euthanasia" in National Socialism using the example of the Kalmenhof in Idstein / Ts. 1983.
• Peter Wensierski: Beatings in the name of the Lord. The repressed history of children in care in the Federal Republic of Germany , DVA, Munich 2006. (Comment: Unfortunately, no sources are given, with regard to the actual file situation, the presentation of the "Pappenheimer case" is rather blurred)

Web link

• The synagogue in Dornheim (City of Groß-Gerau, Hesse) , Alemannia Judaica

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Martina Hartmann-Menz: Julius Pappenheimer (PDF; 77 kB), Alemannia Judaica , 2012
2. ^ Institute for City History Frankfurt, Box 1.105
3. ↑ Institute for Urban History Frankfurt a. M., Welfare Acts (357) Ruth Pappenheimer
4. ↑ Also: Rüter, p. 239 f.
5. ↑ Rüter p. 239 f.
6. ↑ HHStaW Dept. 461 No. 31526 Bl. 5 Letter from the director to the Frankfurt public prosecutor of October 28, 1946
7. ↑ Bad Camberg: A Dark Chapter ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Frankfurter Neue Presse , September 21, 2013 
8. ↑ HHStaW. Section 461 No. 31526 sheet 5 and Rüter, p. 239.
9. ↑ HHStaW Section 461/31526/2 sheet 7
10. ↑ HHStaW. Dept. 461 No. 31526 sheet 5
11. ↑ HHStaW. Dept. 461 No. 31526 sheet 6
12. ↑ Rüter, p. 243.
13. ↑ Rüter, p. 243 f.
14. ↑ Sick, p. 39.
15. ^ Rüter, p. 239.
16. ^ Rüter, p. 241.
17. ↑ Sick, p. 39 ff.
18. ^ FNP, November 27, 1946
19. ↑ Wesnierski, Peter. Beats In The Name Of The Lord (2006)
20. ↑ Peter Wensierski: Strikes in the name of the Lord. The suppressed history of children in care in the Federal Republic of Germany , DVA, Munich 2006, p. 136.
21. ↑ see Peter Wensierski: Beatings in the name of the Lord. The repressed history of children in care in the Federal Republic of Germany , DVA, Munich 2006
22. ↑ See: Petra Feldmann: The "Beautiful Jewess". Jewish (mental) beauty between eroticized desire and anti-Jewish resistance as an exemplary phenomenon of the legitimation of hegemonic orders of perception. In: Nebulosa - Journal for Visibility and Sociality. 2012/01