Karoline HÖBERTH was born in Vienna’s 2nd District (Wien-Leopoldstadt) on August 2, 1885 and was baptized Roman Catholic. She was the youngest of the three children of Karoline and Ferdinand Höberth, shopkeepers in Vienna.

There is little to report about the daughter Karoline: She stayed single, moved to Salzburg with her widowed mother towards the end of WWI and lived for a while with relatives at 33 Lasserstraße.

She seems to have been admitted as an inpatient on several occasions and was definitely a patient at the Sisters of Mercy’s asylum in Schernberg (about 70 km south of Salzburg near Schwarzach im Pongau) since May 3, 1939 when Austria was under Nazi rule.

Karoline HÖBERTH was one of the 122 identified patients who were deported on April 21, 1941 from Schernberg to the killing center in Hartheim Castle near Linz where they were all murdered.

As with all the other victims of the secret Nazi »T4«1 program to eliminate the handicapped the death of 55 year old Karoline HÖBERTH was not recorded in the police registration files.

Her 90 year old mother died in Salzburg a few months later on December 2, 1941.

1 The »T4« program was called that because it’s Berlin headquarters were located at Tiergartenstraße 4.
Those mainly responsible for the murders of the sick in Salzburg: Dr. Friedrich Rainer as Reichsstatthalter, Dr. Oskar Hausner as head of the Gaufürsorgeamt, Dr. Leo Wolfer as head of the Landesheilanstalt, and Dr. Heinrich Wolfer as head of the hereditary biology department of the Landesheilanstalt (today the Christian Doppler Clinic).

Quellen

  • Victim databank of the Hartheim Memorial Site of the Upper Austrian State Archives
  • Parish registers of the Vienna Archdiocese
  • Police Registration Files of the city of Salzburg
Author: Gert Kerschbaumer
Translation: Stan Nadel

Stumbling Stone
Laid 24.09.2019 at Salzburg, Lasserstraße 33

<p>HIER WOHNTE<br />
KAROLINE HÖBERTH<br />
JG. 1885<br />
DEPORTIERT 21. 4. 1941<br />
SCHLOSS HARTHEIM<br />
ERMORDET 1941</p>
Photo: Gert Kerschbaumer

All stumbling stones at Lasserstraße 33