Memorial Sign for Hedwig Schuster,
Gärtnerplatz 3

Hedwig Schuster worked as a cleaner and kitchen maid and was the mother of four children when she contracted a sexually transmitted disease. Her husband divorced her and she was defencelessly exposed to the repression of the health authorities and the police. The health authorities ordered her to be forcibly admitted to a psychiatric clinic, noted her as ‘suspected of having a hereditary disease’ and advocated forced sterilisation in accordance with the ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring’. According to her medical records, Hedwig Schuster was calm and worked independently in the nursery of the Haar-Eglfing nursing home. This did not protect her from being deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in June 1942, where she was murdered in autumn 1942.

A memorial service for Hedwig Schuster was held at the Gärtnerplatztheater on 17 October 2024. Speakers included city councillor Winfried Kaum, Prof Dr Annette Eberle from the Catholic Foundation University of Munich, and René Eder, a relative of Hedwig Schuster. Afterwards, a Memorial Sign for Hedwig Schuster was placed at her former home at Corneliusstrasse 12.