Former educational home of the Offenbach district: the history of the must be rewritten
This photo of the district education home was probably made in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
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Christian M., poisoned with carbon monoxide in Hadamar in 1941; Willi K., “liquidated” in Hadamar in 1944. Two documented fates of many others, which will probably never be cleared up. The young people were previously housed in the reform home of the Offenbach district (in Mühlheim, on what is now the riot police site), from where they were systematically sent for forced sterilization or death at the time.
Offenbach / Mühlheim – “I now have evidence that the district education home was part of the implementation of the extended euthanasia in the Third Reich,” says Frank Zimmermann. The Mühlheimer has made it his business to drag a brown chapter of regional history to light, over which – as is often the case with this topic – the cloak of silence was only too gladly thrown.
In addition to the meanings of comparable institutions that have already been well processed, for example the Kalmenhof in Idstein or the Eichberg in the Rheingau, the so-called special educational mandate for the Mühlheim district educational home is so far unknown, according to Zimmermann. This educational mandate contained nothing other than bringing the pupils to the murder in the Hadamar killing center. “The findings to date show that this role has not yet been comprehensively dealt with by any official side – neither by the city of Mühlheim nor by the Offenbach district.” Frank Zimmermann was only involved in the 1980s, as Frank Zimmermann found out during his research an exhibition and a discussion event on the Nazi era in Mühlheim, the topic was shed light on the margins. Even then, contemporary witnesses had reported unimaginably brutal methods in the district education home. It was built in 1895 and in 1951 the riot police moved into the building.
The extent to which the history of the facility can be viewed from different angles can be demonstrated by two examples from different decades: “Children and young people who came from broken families or were orphans and were therefore placed in the Mühlheim children’s education center were forcibly sterilized here. Since 1938, children and young people from the disbanded Klein-Zimmer institution have also been housed here. The Nazi home management raised the children strictly in the National Socialist sense ”, it says in the“ Topography of National Socialism in Hesse ”of the state historical information system. An undated publication from the post-war period speaks of “bad boys who have to be reintroduced into the social order through employment, especially in agriculture, through instruction and instruction”.
The director of the institution, Pastor Hans Hoffmann, played a central role in the well-oiled machinery of cruelty. The staunch Nazi had taken over the management of the home from his father and worked there as director until 1945. After the Second World War he returned unmolested to the service of the church in 1948 and was a Protestant pastor in Rumpenheim from 1951 to 1968.
“In addition to his role as a leading National Socialist in Mühlheim, he was responsible for the implementation of the racial hygiene of the Third Reich through sterilization of children and adolescents as the head of the district educational institution. In addition, he and his entrusted young people took an active part in the destruction of the Mühlheim synagogue during the Reichspogromnacht ”, reports Frank Zimmermann.
What not only he perceives as monstrous: The regional history paints a beautiful picture of the Nazi pastor, despite his knowledge of his work as the head of the institution. For example, Helmut Hill, the author of the 2006 work “Rumpenheim and Waldheim – Lively City Districts of Offenbach am Main” confirmed that the priest Hans Hoffmann and his active role as a leading National Socialist in Mühlheim, both for him and the Population in Rumpenheim was known. Zimmermann: “Hill did not consider an explanatory clarification necessary either at the time of publication or today.”
Instead, the book contains memories of Hofmann’s daughter, who describes her father in detail as a touching pastor and hobby beekeeper whose “love for service, for his family and nature” was for him the “basis of his Christian way of life and his faith”.
During the Nazi era, however, another Hans Hoffman had revealed himself. In the case of Willi K. mentioned above, who after serving his sentence was briefly housed in a youth prison “for improper use of bicycles, embezzlement and failure to attend school”, the director of the home, Hans Hoffmann, suggested that “this non-community illiterate man be liquidated as quickly as possible . “
Another 15-year-old boy who was housed in his institution from October 1934 to May 1935 was confirmed by the pastor in an affirmative statement on the application for compulsory sterilization by the Hereditary Health Court at Offenbach District Court: Already constitutionally, he was the pronounced image of degeneration: protruding pointed upper jaw, high palate, trembling gait, slender physique with gender characteristics developed well beyond age. “
Frank Zimmermann is looking for
further evidence and possible contemporary witnesses as well as their relatives to the events in the district educational home in Mühlheim. Anyone who can help to process this section of regional history should contact him (the information will be treated confidentially): E-Mail: frank.zimmermann [email protected]
By Matthias Dahmer
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