The Glass siblings were born in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg: Gertrud on 10 August 1916, Herbert on 4 September 1919 and Gerhard on 25 March 1921. In the 1930s, they moved with their parents Melitta Glass (née Döge) and Kurt Glass to Sassendorf in the district of Lüneburg. The middle-class family lived a secluded life.
When the Glass siblings were reported as ‘feeble-minded’ to the health authorities by the Lüneburg neurologist Dr Wilhelm Vosgerau on 4 October 1934, Gertrud Glass was 18 years old, her brother Herbert was 15 and her youngest brother Gerhard was 13. The three medical reports were not only all prepared on the same day (12 November 1937), but their content is also largely identical. A week later, the three siblings were reported for sterilisation on the grounds of »idiocy.« On 17 January 1938, the Lüneburg Hereditary Health Court ordered their forced sterilisation.
The father’s appeal was rejected in all three cases by the Higher Court for Hereditary Health in Celle. The identical judgements on Gertrud, Herbert and Gerhard Glass state: »All three children are severely mentally deficient. Their outward appearance is unmistakably that of idiots. It is not possible to test the intelligence of any of the siblings. […]« The Glass siblings were then forcibly sterilised at the Lüneburg hospital on 6 and 7 July 1938. Two months later, their father developed a mental illness that required him to be admitted to the Lüneburg mental hospital. He died a year later as a result of »progressive paralysis«.
Melitta Glass, now a widow, continued to live in Sassendorf with her three children, who were now adults. On 11 April 1942, the district medical officer Dr Hans Rohlfing recommended that all three siblings be admitted to the institution.
On 13 May 1942, the three siblings were forcibly admitted to the institution by the police. Their mother Melitta visited her adult children on 4 June 1942, 7 November 1942 and 8 May 1943. On 8 September 1943, the three siblings were transferred to the Pfafferode State Hospital. Pfafferode was one of the institutions to which patients were deported after the end of »Aktion T4« in order to be left there to die through deliberate malpractice and neglect. Of the Glass siblings, Gerhard was the first to die, just six months after his arrival in Pfafferode, on 7 March 1944. A month later, Herbert was also dead. His death notice reads: »Herbert Glass from Sassendorf, born on 4 September 1919 in Wilhelmsburg, who was transferred to this institution on 8 September 1943, died on 15 May 1944. Diagnosis: idiocy. Cause of death: marasmus.« In Herbert’s case, no attempt was even made to conceal the true cause of death. A year later, on 14 May 1945, Gertrud Glass also died.
