Barbara (Babette) Hartard

Barbara Hartard, familiarly known as Babette, grew up in Speyer and was the daughter of a master tailor. In 1909, at the age of 13 years, she took up a position as a housemaid with a civil servant’s family in Speyer, with whom she moved to Munich for some time. Over the next few years, she worked as a servant for various families. In August 1924, Barbara Hartard moved to Munich, where she boarded in a bed and breakfast, the Pension Daser at Galeriestraße 36 (today Unsöldstraße 13). Only a few weeks later, on September 22, 1924, she was admitted to a Psychiatric Clinic. Diagnosed with “schizophrenic paranoid dementia“, she was committed to the closed sanatorium and nursing home Eglfing-Haar. She vehemently opposed the committal, as is evident from her medical file: “Where I go is none of your business. … If I hear voices, that’s none of your business. What I hear is of no consequence to you, it’s my business. What I hear doesn’t disturb anyone.“ Barbara Hartard’s condition did not improve over the years; on the contrary, her reactions were ever more frequently aggressive, and she was moved to what was known as the “festes Haus” (tight house) 22 for extremely disturbed or criminal female patients. In 1938, the committed Nazi Hermann Pfannmüller took over the management of the sanatorium and nursing home Eglfing-Haar. He marked the files of all the patients he classified as “unworthy of life” with a red cross; they included that of Barbara Hartard. On September 3, 1940 she and 120 other women were deported to the sanatorium and nursing home Niedernhart near Linz, an interim camp for the killing site Hartheim. In the late summer of 1940, Barbara Hartard’s family were informed that she had died of pneumonia on September 18, 1940. It is probable that neither the date nor the cause of death was true. For 30 Reichsmark, the Hartard family could have the urn sent to them. It is very probable that this urn did not contain Barbara Hartard’s ashes, but the random sweepings of the remains of other “euthanasia” victims. (text Christian Hartard, editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)