Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
Curt Walter Stopp
Curt Walter Stopp
Born: 29 October 1898
Died: 11.09.1940
Place of installation:
Amalienstraße 62, today Tschaikowskistraße 62Stumbling stone laying on:
17 May 2022
Life path
The teacher Walter Stopp was one of the many people who were discriminated against by the Nazi state due to mental illness or disability and murdered in one of the "euthanasia" centres. His nephew Günter Stopp remembered his unknown uncle, whom he never met personally, until he was very old. It was only after the death of his older sister a few years ago that he received documents that helped him to save his uncle's fate from being forgotten forever.
Walter Stopp was born in Breitenbrunn in the Ore Mountains, the son of a later customs inspector. Eduard Louis Stopp (1864-1954) and Anna Selma Günther (1869-1954), his parents, had two more sons and a daughter. Walter was gifted and decided to study at the Royal Teachers' College in Frankenberg. His participation in the First World War (1918) changed his life. Although he was only in the field once, he was buried and suffered gas poisoning. He was discharged at the age of 20 without a pension. From then on, Walter Stopp worked as a teacher and was even elected head of the school in Unterstützengrün on 3 July 1925. However, he declined the election for health reasons. He was then examined by the school doctor on 29 August 1925. As a result, he was finally relieved of his new post by the district school board.
Walter Stopp then took a temporary leave of absence from the school board. He lived with his parents again. Gardening helped him during this time. However, his health deteriorated in the following period. According to his nephew Günter, this was probably due to the fact that he had to suppress his homosexual tendencies during this time. In January 1926, Walter's father noticed "a certain unwillingness to work", severe headaches and suicidal tendencies in his son. As a result, Walter Stopp was admitted to the municipal mental hospital on 30 April 1926. The doctors treating him suspected schizophrenia as the underlying condition.
The parents took their son home on 3 October 1926. His condition was described in the files as "improved". After eight days, Stopp's condition deteriorated again. Hallucinations dominated his life from then on. Dr Curt Berliner, his family doctor, then admitted him to the mental hospital again on 5 December 1926. Despite therapy, his condition did not improve this time. He asked for snake venom to poison himself. After attacking nurses, he finally agreed to be transferred to the state sanatorium and nursing home in Zschadraß on 22 March 1927. Dr Rudolf Melzer, the attending physician, confirmed the original diagnosis. Walter Stopp was then taken to the railway station in an ambulance and brought to Zschadraß by train. He was never to return to Chemnitz. His father paid for his care.
On 11 September 1940, Walter Stopp was transferred to the Pirna-Sonnenstein killing centre together with 70 other patients on a transport ("Aktion T4") for gassing and was most likely murdered there on the same day.
A few months before his death, Günter Stopp was delighted that his painstaking search for clues would come to a worthy conclusion.
Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
It is a project against forgetting: stumbling stones have been laid in Chemnitz every year since 2007.
Embedded in the pavement, the memorial stones commemorate the tragic fates of fellow citizens who were persecuted, deported, murdered or driven to their deaths during the National Socialist regime.
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