THE EILERS SIBLINGS

The siblings who were admitted to the »children’s ward« in Lüneburg also included the four siblings of the Eilers family: Siegfried (born in 1929), Hannelore (born in 1937), Irmgard (born in 1938) and Ernst (born in 1939). Their life stories embody the entire spectrum of persecution of children and adolescents in »Nazi psychiatry«, ranging from murder to lifelong institutionalisation. Initially, only eleven-year-old Siegfried, the eldest son of worker Wilhelm Heinrich Eilers and his wife Luise, née Schomburg, was admitted to the Rotenburg institutions of the Inner Mission. The admission was accompanied by the desire to provide him with adequate schooling. Siegfried was deaf, but as he was cheerful and showed an interest in practical matters, there was cause for optimism.

On 9 October 1941, Siegfried was transferred to the »children’s ward« in Lüneburg. However, he escaped admission because his mother picked him up in Lüneburg on the same day and took him home. There are indications that she had been warned about admission to the »special children’s ward« through church contacts. A year later, on the initiative of the welfare association, Siegfried Eilers was again admitted to the »special children’s ward« in Lüneburg. The decisive factor now was that the family was considered »large and antisocial« due to a marriage that had since broken down. An attempt to release him to welfare education in Wunstorf in 1943 failed due to Willi Baumert’s expert opinion: »The young person comes from a genetically burdened, antisocial extended family. […] Intellectually, he shows considerable deficits that are not caused by his deafness and muteness.«

Willi Baumert was not only the key figure in Siegfried’s continued institutionalisation, but also in relation to his siblings. They were taken away from their mother on 22 January 1943 and admitted to the Provincial Youth Home in Wunstorf. As medical consultant to the Provincial Youth Home in Wunstorf, Baumert consequently also wrote identical reports on Siegfried’s siblings Hannelore, Irmgard and Ernst, which ultimately led not to their placement in a conventional home, but to their joint admission to the »children’s ward« he headed. On 28 June 1943, the three children arrived in Lüneburg, accompanied by a German Red Cross nurse.

According to the medical records, the sisters were very affectionate at first, and the girls were also very happy to meet their older and younger brothers. Because Irmgard and Hannelore gradually showed interest, talked to other children, understood what they were told to do, played purposefully, were exuberant and cheerful, found their way around independently and kept themselves clean, Willi Baumert came to the conclusion after several weeks of observation in July and August 1943 that the sisters Irmgard and Hannelore did indeed have a certain capacity for education. On 26 January 1944, the sisters were transferred together to Eben-Ezer (Lemgo). They were not released from there until 1960 and 1962, respectively.

When House 23 was cleared, his younger brother Ernst was transferred to House 24 in the autumn/winter of 1944/1945. In January 1945, Mrs Kleim, secretary to the medical director, noted that Ernst was a »nice, affectionate child. Interested in everything going on around him. He tries to make himself understood by drawing pictures. He plays very nicely with other children, using houses and building blocks.« The fact that he was one of the most popular children on the ward did not save his life. At almost six years of age, he weighed only 16 kilograms and was malnourished. Ernst died on 11 April 1945. The official cause of death was »pneumonia« and »acute nephritis,« i.e. kidney inflammation. It is highly likely that he died as a result of malnutrition.

After Ernst’s death, Siegfried remained alone in the »children’s ward.« He had lost someone particularly close to him, his younger brother, who, like him, had been deaf. Siegfried survived the »children’s ward« but remained an institutionalised patient. A holiday notification dated 10 July 1947 indicates that Siegfried was apparently only taken home from institutional care once. In 1955, his sister Waltraut – it is unclear whether she was his eldest sister – asked for Siegfried to be granted leave for Christmas. Questions and doubts raised by his sister Waltraut as to whether Siegfried was even capable of taking a job, what he would look like and how she should imagine him, make it clear how isolated Siegfried had remained from his family and how little interest was shown in him during his time in the institution.

Siegfried had been working in agriculture for several years as part of occupational therapy at the psychiatric hospital and was therefore perfectly capable of performing light duties. For this reason, among others, the nurse was offered the opportunity to release Siegfried from institutional care altogether. But things turned out differently: one day before Siegfried was supposed to be discharged and picked up to go home, Waltraut’s husband cancelled the pick-up. Further attempts to release Siegfried or bring him home are not documented in the otherwise relatively complete file. Siegfried’s time in the Lüneburg institution did not end until January 1969. Admitted as an 11-year-old child, he was transferred from House 19 to the branch of the Königslutter State Hospital at Ringelheim Castle in Salzgitter after 29 years of uninterrupted »institutional care« in Lüneburg as a man of almost 40. He died there in 1976.