Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
Elisabeth Chalybäus
Elisabeth Chalybäus
Born: 08.12.1861
Died: 08.08.1940
Installation location:
Heinrich-Beck-Straße 38Stumbling stone laying on:
14 June 2023
Photos of the laying of the Stumbling Stones
Life path
The former private teacher Elisabeth Alwine Chalybäus was one of over 70,000 people who were murdered in one of the "euthanasia" centres during the Nazi regime due to mental illness or disability.
She was born in Chemnitz to Friedrich Albert Chalybäus (1830-1898), a married merchant, and Ernestine Pauline Hofmann (1838-1870). Her parents had two other children, all of whom they brought up in the Lutheran tradition.
Elisabeth grew up in sheltered circumstances until her mother's early death.
Her father lived temporarily with his children in Dresden. He returned to Chemnitz in the autumn of 1876. Friedrich Albert Chalybäus, who subsequently became a court-certified expert in bookkeeping and commercial accounting, had finally arrived in middle-class city society.
Elisabeth graduated from the teacher training seminar in Dresden in 1881 with a grade 1. She then worked as a private teacher for a while. She herself described her professional career as follows: "Two years ill and two years working". As she was prone to "crying and melancholy moods" from an early age, she was only able to practise her profession with longer breaks.
From the spring of 1889, Elisabeth lived with her father and brothers in a flat. From then on, she was only there for her relatives and was completely absorbed in the role of selfless landlady. In the summer of 1921, her health began to deteriorate.
Elisabeth suddenly developed ideas of persecution. As a result, she was repeatedly admitted to the mental hospital in Hilbersdorf. For the doctors treating her, she suffered from "present persecution mania". Her condition did not improve, so she was transferred to the sanatorium and nursing home in Zschadraß on 29 April 1922. She was to remain in this institution until 8 August 1940.
On that day, Elisabeth Chalybäus and 89 other patients from the Zschadraß state institution were taken on a transport ("Aktion T4") to the Pirna-Sonnenstein killing centre, where they were probably murdered with gas on the same day. To conceal the circumstances of her death, her brother Ernst Albert, who lived in Chemnitz, was sent a death certificate with false information by the "T4" centre in Berlin. According to this, she died on 22 August 1940 in Hartheim near Linz, where there was also a killing centre. At her brother's request, the ashes of the deceased were buried on 12 November 1940 in communal grave 6 in the municipal urn grove in Chemnitz.
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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