Maria "Katchen" Reichardt

In 1917, during World War I, Willy was killed in action in France at only 44, and Ella – ‘Omi’ became a widow and single mother with two daughters. As a result, she moved back to her native city of Berlin, where her father was still living. She found a reasonable rental apartment in an affluent neighborhood near Charlottenburg Palace. Hilla attended high school, but Kätchen stayed home because she was too often ill to attend. She was taught at home by a teacher from the auxiliary school from fall of 1921 to spring of 1923. Kätchen could read and write a little. She was unable to learn math.

After each serious illness, the child's mental development regressed. Kätchen was completely helpless around strangers and could not cross a road on her own. Kätchen had contracted encephalitis at the age of one year and three months. Family members attribute later developmental delays and difficulties to this early childhood illness.

When Kätchen was admitted to St. Johannes-Stift Niedermarsberg on July 24, 1925, the facility had: “... 470 beds and specialist departments for acute psychiatric treatment and psychosomatics: discharge preparation; clinical central and neuropediatric treatment; medium-long-term treatment (learning and mentally handicapped), and medium-long-term treatment (multiple handicapped). The hospital area includes extensive facilities for occupational work and occupational therapy for vocational promotion and rehabilitation, including appropriate craft workshops and a well-equipped social center.”

Then, beginning of 1928, according to the record, she seemed to be again completely changed “speaks by herself, laughs and plays nicely with the other children.” In 1930 she was described as silly, saying stupid thing and being stubborn. The next years she was characterized as doing ok. In summer 1933 the situation must have been pretty good. On August 29, 1933 her mother, ‘Omi’ took her on a ten day long trip to the city of Trier as written in the record. An entry under September 9, 1933: “Came back today. Didn't cause any major problems on the trip.” In 1935 it’s mentioned that she had had seizures again and from that time onwards they occurred about every quarter of a year. In 1936 one can read “Still shows strong mood swings. At times cheerful, friendly, approachable, then again agitated, stubborn, grumpy, absent. Physical condition satisfactory. Weight: 99 pounds.“That’s not a lot of weight for a 5.4 feet tall young women. But she was never very heavy. The most she ever weighed during her time in the sanatorium was 103.6 pound and the last weight entry from March 1939 shows 94.8 pounds.

These mood swings continued in 1937. In June she was examined once again, as stated: “Occasional rhythmic movements, especially of the thumbs (in the manner of counting money.) Hands and fingers are always kept bent. … Sings together with other patients. Does not respond to requests. Does not answer any questions. Sometimes speaks spontaneously.” There are no entries for 1938. In March 1939 the following entry was made: “Strong mood swings, sometimes friendly and approachable, sometimes agitated and angry. Is clean, needs to be fed. Communication with her is not possible.”

Even though it was quite a way from Berlin, ‘Omi’, her mother, and her sister, Hilla, visited Kätchen regularly in Marsberg.  Possibly ‘Omi’s’ sister, who was living just 28 miles away in the city of Paderborn, visited her too or picked her up for excursions. But this is just an assumption because there are no personal stories known or records left about the relationship between Kätchen and ‘Omi’s’ sister.

Family Members

Bernhard Hartung - Brother-in-Law and Physician 

Visit the Bernhard Hartung page for a more information about Dr. Hartung's story.

During their visits to Marsberg, Hilla and Bernhard eventually got to know each other. From May 1934 to January 1936, Bernhard worked at St. Johannes-Stift in Niedermarsberg as the deputy head doctor. He had actively applied for the position which included “a very nice and modern company apartment” opposite from the main building where the patients were housed, among them Kätchen. However, Bernhard did not work in the main institution; he had his “work place, a ‘dependance’ of the main institution in the center of Marsberg, 1 km away”

Unexpectedly and only a short time after he had moved there with his first wife, Anneliese, and their three children, Ilse, Sigrid, and Christoph, Anneliese died while giving birth to their fourth child who then died a few days later. Bernhard, now a widower, supported by his sister and the nuns of the institution continued to live and work in Marsberg with his children who, according to Ilse’s and Sigrid’s recollection in their later years, regularly played with the disabled residents, especially because their apartment building was just opposite from the main building’s girl’s wing.

Sigrid told the family that there were long corridors where they romped around with the other children and that there was a large room with lots of doll's houses where she particularly enjoyed playing. According to her recollection, the disabled children would also take them sometimes to their dormitories. Through these activities she and her siblings also got to know Kätchen, perhaps this is how Hilla met Bernhard by chance one day.

In January 1936, Bernhard was once again forcibly transferred, this time to the Sanatorium and Nursing Home Lengerich. This had already happened twice before he came to Marsberg.  It was most likely because of his Catholic and conservative political views, which he repeatedly expressed and which didn’t fit to the Nazi ideology. He was also observed in Lengerich, among other things because he had spoken out against the nationalization of a Catholic school (March 1937), attended catholic pilgrimages (January and late summer 1937), and the Sunday services in the local church. One day he was confronted with the accusation “that my greater love obviously belonged to the Catholic Church, not to the state today …". This accusation included a request for a written statement.

Hilla and Bernhard married on May 6, 1936 in Berlin. She stopped her envisioned career as an art teacher, moved in with him and was suddenly a house wife and “mother” of three children.

On May 1, 1938, Bernhard was promoted to the Sanatorium Eickelborn. A month earlier he had received his promotion letter: “In the interests of the public service, you will be transferred to the Eickelborn Sanatorium on May 1 of this year. Your appointment as a senior physician with a lifetime appointment as a civil servant is planned for the same date.” Bernhard wrote in his autobiography about this transfer: “I am convinced that they wanted to place me into a new and, as it turned out, far more unpleasant environment. They worked with carrots and sticks! ... This 'village' of Eickelborn ... could only be seen as a place of isolation from my point of view, in the sense: 'The guy must be able to be brought down ... .” Among his colleagues in Eickelborn was another senior physician, who turned out to be the local NSDAP party leader. So he was under even closer surveillance as before.

Therefore, he began to think more and more about how he could escape being spied on by his Nazi colleagues and the Gestapo, but also how he could turn his back on the psychiatric system, as the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring” and various “Hunger Decrees” had already been issued in the previous years regarding a new way of dealing with physically, mentally, and psychologically impaired people, which he did not want to support. As early as January 1934, he had already asked the Bishop of Ermland where he was living during that time, Maximilian Kaller, “what a Catholic doctor's position should be on the forced sterilization of ‘hereditarily diseased’ people.” In his opinion, this was morally indefensible, and so he began even before Hitler's ‘Euthanasia’-Authorization of 1939 to look for a new job. “... (I) knew, however, that I could be forced into intolerable situations if I remained in the psychiatric ward of the ‘Third Reich’.” Whether he actually knew about the “Hunger Decrees” or not is not known to the family. 

Jenny Reichardt - Paternal Aunt

The family left Kätchen in Niedermarsberg, probably assuming that she continued to be well there, especially as her mother, sister, and Aunt Jenny continued to visit her every once in a while.

The family never really knew a lot about Aunt Jenny, despite the fact that she worked as the personal lectrice (reader/lecturer) of Queen Emma of the Netherlands, lived at the court in De Haag and after her retirement chose Marsberg as her place of residence. Bernhard wrote about her: “An aunt 'Jenny' Reichardt - after her retirement as Lectrice to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands [in fact she was the lectrice of Emma, Wilhelmina’s mother] - had chosen the town of Niedermarsberg as her retirement home to look after her [Kätchen]. She often visited the child in the institution and supplemented the loving care of the Vincentian Sisters.”

During the family’s research about Kätchen they found letter’s from Aunt Jenny to Kätchen in the patient file and discovered that Kätchen was Aunt Jenny’s beloved niece and that they must have had a very loving relationship. Jenny sent letters and parcels during her work life in the Netherlands and visited her as often as she could. Among others the family found a Christmas card from Queen Emma for Kätchen from December 1925 kept in her file. The postcard was accompanied by a longer lovely Christmas letter from Aunt Jenny to her niece.

As the family learned from another letter Jenny sent to the sanatorium, she also supported her brother, Willy Reichardt, Kätchen’s father, and her sister-in-law, Kätchen’s mother ,‘Omi’, financially during the war and after, especially when ‘Omi’ was a widow and had to pay the care allowance for the sanatorium by herself.

According to the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases”, requires all disabled people to fill out a report certifying whether the person in question suffered from a hereditary disease. This was also done in Kätchen's case and she was certified with “congenital feeblemindedness”. Although this was not true, as shown by all other medical and examination reports of the sanatorium at the time she was admitted: “Disease form: acquired feeblemindedness (after meningitis)”. It is not clear whether this misdiagnosis was deliberate or  an oversight, but it was certainly one reason why Kätchen later became a victim of the Nazi “euthanasia” program.

These certifications had to be sent to the medical officer responsible for the place of residence or stay of the respective person. In Kätchen’s case it was sent to Berlin-Charlottenburg where she used to live before and where her mother, ‘Omi’ and her older sister were still living. In the certification it was not only stated that she suffered from a hereditary disease, but also that she was “able to reproduce” and therefore a “dismissal is out of the question”. 

"Omi’ received a war widow's pension, in addition to an orphan's pension for Kätchen because of her sickness, and a general children supplement. The last two together were 45 Mark, only about one third of the care allowance. ‘Omi’ also had to support her older daughter who was still in education, first in Gymnasium (high school) and later in University. It’s not known how high her widow’s pension was, but it was definitely not a lot, there was a request for a reduction of the care allowance to the responsible authorities in 1929 after she had received an announcement that the care allowance would increase. ‘Omi’ was “unable to pursue any gainful employment as I was ill myself [she had some kind of a heart disease] and also have the difficult task of caring for my now 82½ year old, decrepit father who lived with me.

The late 1920s and early 1930 was the time of the Great Depression and inflation rose to never seen before heights in Germany. The increase of the care allowance came at a time of very fast rising living costs without an increase in pension or other support. Aunt Jenny was also heavily impacted. The situation in the Netherlands was as bad as in Germany, and she couldn’t support ‘Omi’ anymore. She explains this in a letter to the director of the Sanatorium, asking him to prevent the increase in care allowance, “The news of the increase in care allowance payments, which also extends to Käthchen's contribution, has caused me great embarrassment and concern during my visit to Marsberg.  I once had the opportunity to describe our circumstances to you. My sister-in-law and I lost all our assets during the period of inflation. I lost the savings from 40 years of work. My sister-in-law only has her military widow's pension, which is not enough for the expenses of a lot of illness and the accommodation of Käthchen in Marsberg. I can't help my own people now, as I was able to do during the war and post-war years. I am 65 years old, I can be sent away [sent into retirement] any day, the age limit is there. I owe the fact that I have not yet done so to the kindness and mercy of the Queen Mother. … Work has become much more arduous due to the more difficult living conditions. In addition, taxes are very high for everyone."

The director did not have the power to decide about the issue and suggested that ‘Omi’ sent an official request to the responsible authorities. Eventually her application to be exempt from the increased fee was approved and ‘Omi’ was allowed to continue to pay 4 Mark instead of 5 Mark per day. Three years later, in 1932 the situation worsened. “As a war widow – my husband was killed as an active major on the Western Front in 1917 – I have had the surviving dependants = care fees (words illegible) to support me and my children over the years. Until October 1st of this year, I received the orphan's pension for the child who was accommodated in Niedermarsberg in consideration of her illness. Until the spring of this year, I also received the child allowance. Both sums, which together amounted to 45 marks for the month, have now been abolished. In addition, due to the emergency regulations, my pension has been reduced by around a third since the last time the daily care rate was set. I am therefore now completely unable to continue paying the previous nursing rate of 4 Mark. In view of the fact that the total cost of living has fallen considerably since the care rate of 4 Mark was set and with reference to my extraordinary emergency situation, I take the liberty of making the very humble and urgent request to reduce the care rate for my child to 3 Mark. Raising this sum will require me to make enormous sacrifices, as this sum also consumes almost half of my pension.” In the end, this request was also granted and ‘Omi’ only had to pay 3 Mark per month.

If these lower payments had any specific impact on the care Kätchen received is not known to the family, but they assume not. More likely the above mentioned new laws, rules and regulations, as well as general restrictions in staff numbers and rationed food for the overall institution played the decisive role and affected all of the patients.

Adulthood and Death

According to the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases”, requires all disabled people to fill out a report  certifying whether the person in question suffered from a hereditary disease. This was also done in Kätchen's case and she was certified with “congenital feeblemindedness”. Although this was not true, as shown by all other medical  and examination reports of the sanatorium at the time she was admitted: “Disease form: acquired feeblemindedness (after meningitis)”. It is not clear whether this misdiagnosis was deliberate or  anoversight, but it was certainly one reason why Kätchen later became a victim of the Nazi “euthanasia” program.

These  certifications had to be send sent to the medical officer responsible for the place of residence or stay of the respective person. In Kätchen’s case it was sent to Berlin-Charlottenburg where she used to live before and where her mother, ‘Omi’ and her older sister were still living. In the certification it was not only stated that she suffered from a hereditary disease, but also that she was “able to reproduce” and therefore a “dismissal is out of the question”. 

It’s not know if this doctor’s entry determined the decision to transfer Kätchen, but the fact that she had “to be completely cared for” and was “completely incapable of any gainful activity” was definitely a very important finding as in the Nazi ideology only people who could at least contribute something to society had a right to live. Kätchen was transferred from Marsberg Sanatorium to Weilmünster Sanatorium on June 29, 1941.

As mentioned earlier, Aunt Jenny had moved to Marsberg after her retirement and visited Käthchen regularly . However, some day end of June or beginning of July, when going to visit Käthchen, she was told that she was not in the Sanatorium anymore.  “One day, however, she [Jenny] had to inform the patient's mother [‘Omi’] that 'Kätchen' had been transferred from the Marsberg institution (Johannisstift) to another institution with an unknown destination.” The family made than inquiries about Kätchen's whereabouts.

On July 3, 1941 Bernhard wrote a letter to the Marsberg Sanatorium asking where Kätchen was sent. From there his letter was forwarded to the “Gemeinnützige Krankentransport GmbH” (non-profit patient transport company) in Berlin. . He later received a letter dated July 17, 1941 with the information that “Käthe Reichardt, born 8/21/1882, was transferred to the Bernburg/Saale sanatorium and nursing home” and that they had asked the Bernburg institution to get in contact with the family. But because the Käthe Reichardt mentioned in the letter had the wrong date of birth, she couldn’t be their Kätchen and Bernhard wrote again. About ten days later he received a letter from Bernburg with the information “We regret to inform you that the patient, Miss Auguste Luise Henriette Reichardt, born August 21, 1882 in Zeitz ... died here already on December 18, 1940 from a severe epileptic seizure.” Now it was absolutely clear that there was a mistake.

Meanwhile, according to Bernhard’s autobiography, her mother ‘Omi’ had received a letter from Marsberg that her daughter had been transferred to the Herborn Sanatorium for 'war-related security reasons'.”Furthermore on July 10, 1941 ‘Omi’ received a telegram from the Weilmünster Sanatorium that Kätchen had died the same day and that the funeral would be next Sunday.

So ‘Omi’ and Aunt Jenny went to Weilmünster Sanatorium. According to Bernhard’s autobiography, very unusually, “a dead woman was presented to them, who, emaciated beyond recognition, could only be recognized by her mother as her daughter Käthe by her deformed feet.” ‘Omi’ herself wrote in a letter to the director of the Weilmünster Sanatorium “It was difficult to recognize my child - she had changed so much, if only her hair had not  been cut off completely” 

These quotes from Bernhard and ’Omi’ fit to the official cause of death “Marasmus”. Nevertheless, ‘Omi’ was told that “supposedly, the patient had died of pneumonia, a false statement, as it was given to countless relatives at the time.”

Very disturbingly, on August 3, ‘Omi’ received a note from the Weilmünster Sanatorium telling her, that her daughter was transferred to another unknown sanatorium. She was shocked and outraged, and immediately wrote a letter to the director of the Weilmünster Sanatorium with the urgent question and demand to be told if her daughter was dead or still alive. A few days later she received an apologetic message, dated August 5, 1941, saying that she had accidentally received information about a patient with the same name who had been transferred. It’s quite strange that both Bernhard and ‘Omi’ independently from each other on different dates and from different institutions received notification about patients who supposedly had the same name as their Kätchen.

On August 13, 1941 ‘Omi’ wrote to her older daughter, Hilla, and her husband, Bernhard,

“If I wasn't convinced that we buried Kätchen on July 13, 1941, then one could get too much in the thought of what the poor child would have had to face now!”

*NOTE: The timeline surrounding Katchen’s transfer, death, funeral, and related communications on her status are not linear and impact the families ongoing questions around Katchen’s final days. Besides the attached death register, the other letters regarding Katchen’s death are not included.

Legacy

In 1943, when the bombing of all major German cities and especially Berlin where Omi still lived, “became more frequent and the danger ever greater, she moved to us [her daughter, Hilla, and her son in law, Bernhard, and their children] in Celle, leaving valuable property behind. In 1944, the house was hit by a bomb, which could have meant death for her if she had stayed.”

According to oral family history, in January, 1945 Hilla gave birth to her youngest daughter, Agnete, the last of four children she had with Bernhard, in addition to the three children he had from his first marriage. Her mother, ‘Omi’, took baby Agnete on as a surrogate daughter and sheltered her more than enough from her perspective.  She was a rather sickly child, but always driven by the urge to be active and to get outside. But fearing that something might happen to her, ‘Omi’ often would not allow her to play outside with other children or do things on her own. As the family home was always very cramped, Agnete shared a room with her grandmother until she was 16, making her feel constricted and controlled, and causing physical and psychological problems.

Today, Agnete and the family understand ‘Omi’s’ behavior as a reaction to the loss of her own daughter. So Kätchen, whom most family members never got to know, had an influence on Agnete’s life and thus also on her husband, son, and other family members. In order to come to terms with this part of the family history and to know more about Kätchen’s fate apart from a few family stories and Bernhard's autobiography, the family started to conduct a research about her.

In 2024 the family sent an email to the successor of the Marsberg Sanatorium and Nursing Home and received the information, that all records about former patients were kept in the central archives of the “Landschaftsverband Westfalen Lippe (LWL)“. They were very surprised when they got an email that the patient file of Kätchen still existed in the archives and that they could receive a digital copy. They were even more surprised when they received 144 pages with all different documents, among others the cited personal letters of ‘Omi’ and Aunt Jenny, as well as copies of the answers of the director of the Marsberg Sanatorium and other authorities.

When the family contacted the Vitos Hospital Weilmünster, the successor of the Weilmünster Sanatorium and Nursing Home,they forwarded the email to the person responsible at the Hadamar Memorial, the central memorial for all “Euthanasia” murders in Hesse and received the following answer:

“Mrs. Maria Katharina Reichardt, born on 12/15/1911 in Posen, was admitted to the Marsberg institution on a date unknown to us. From there she was transferred to the Weilmünster State Sanatorium on 06/29/1941. At this time, Weilmünster was a so-called ‘intermediate institution’ for the Hadamar killing center. From January to August 1941, Hadamar was one of six ‘Euthanasia’ killing centers of ‘Aktion T4’. This meant that patients from other institutions were initially collected in “intermediate institutions” and soon afterwards transferred to Hadamar and murdered.

“However, Maria Katharina Reichardt died of 'Marasmus' in the Weilmünster state sanatorium on July 10, 1941. The patients in Weilmünster were also severely affected by the reduction in the food rate and the low nursing staff. Due to these circumstances alone, it can be assumed that patients died as a result of the deliberately poor care situation or became more susceptible to spreading infectious diseases, which could ultimately lead to death. One can also call up the death entry in the Weilmünster death register digitally.”

Unfortunately, the research, especially on Weilmünster, has not yet been completed. We are therefore unable to provide any definitive information about Mrs. Reichardt's fate.

Since 1991, a memorial stone in the cemetery of the Weilmünster institution has commemorated the victims of ‘Euthanasia’. Since 2003, the cemetery has been designed as a memorial to the victims of Nazi ‘Euthanasia’ and documents all known names of the deceased buried there. Further information on the history of Weilmünster Hospital can be found in the exhibition in House 105 and in the book by Christina Vanja (ed.): ‘Heilanstalt – Sanatorium – Kliniken. 100 Jahre Krankenhaus Weilmünster 1897 – 1997, Kassel 1997’.

“If you still have any documents or photographs, we would be very grateful if you could donate copies of them to the memorial. It is very important to us to reconstruct the stories of those persecuted and murdered by the Nazi 'euthanasia' program as accurately as possible.” Finally the family visited the different places where Kätchen lived and died to honor her and give her back her dignity.

Sources

Katchen's story is based on family oral history and primary and secondary sources collected by her relatives. All documents are from the family's personal collection.