AGNES TIMME (NÉE FIEBIG) (1912 – 1941)

Agnes Timme, née Fiebig, was born on January 10, 1912 in Winsen an der Aller in the district of Celle. Her father was an agricultural worker and her mother was a housewife. Agnes married her husband Wilhelm Timme on May 25, 1933, and their first child was born on April 1, 1933. Due to their modest circumstances, the couple initially lived separately. Agnes gave birth to their second daughter on April 7, 1934. After the birth, the small family moved to Hermannsburg. The third child, a son, was born on February 25, 1936. Finally, a year and a half later, in July 1937, the fourth child was born. With this birth, Agnes fell ill with psychosis.

When her youngest daughter was christened, three weeks after giving birth, she was already a patient in Celle Hospital. From there, she was transferred to the Lüneburg sanatorium and nursing home with a diagnosis of »graft schizophrenia«. Her husband Wilhelm, who worked in the armaments industry at Rheinmetall Borsig Werke in Unterlüss, found himself having to look after four small children, including a newborn, on top of his work. He probably had no choice but to give all four children away. One daughter went to live with an aunt in Hamburg for three years. The other three children were sent to a home run by the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization. On April 2, 1940, the daughter in Hamburg was also sent to the Celle Children’s Home of the People’s Welfare, so that the children were reunited.

The children stayed in the home for over a year and were also there when their mother Agnes was transferred to the Herborn intermediate care facility on April 30, 1941, and from there to the Hadamar killing center on June 16, 1941, where she was murdered. In August 1941, one of the daughters was placed in a foster family. After three days, the foster parents brought her back to the home to swap her for her stronger and therefore more capable sister. The foster family’s neighbors found the foster parents‘ behaviour heartless and took the supposedly weaker child from the home a day later, so that the two sisters were raised as neighbors from then on. The other two siblings were placed with two other foster families. The separation of the children later led to a rift with the father. Agnes‘ youngest child was later the one who reproached her father the most, partly because she felt partly to blame for her mother’s illness.