Scharbeutz

Scharbeutz marks the final change of setting in Fritz Honka’s life: after years in secure psychiatric care, he was moved there in 1993 under a new name and placed in an elderly-care home. The transfer brought a short-lived improvement in his adjustment, followed by years of withdrawal and physical decline; in 1998, worsening paranoid delusions prompted his return to hospital, where he died.

Transfer to Scharbeutz

On May 17, 1975, firefighters responding to a fire at Zeißstraße 74 found human remains in the attic storeroom. Fritz Honka was soon suspected of the killings and, after days of silence, confessed to investigators on July 29. He was later transferred to the secure psychiatric unit of Ochsenzoll General Hospital in Hamburg-Langenhorn. This history explains why his move to Scharbeutz was not an ordinary retirement: it followed years of institutional confinement and ongoing assessments of his condition and the risk he might pose.

In 1993, authorities considered relocating Honka to another federal state under a different identity. He agreed to take the name Peter Jensen, and in May he was sent to an elderly-care home in Scharbeutz, by the Baltic Sea. Alcohol remained forbidden. The new name and setting altered the conditions of his life, but did not erase the institutional supervision that had shaped it.

Life in the care home

During a two-month trial period, Jensen integrated well into the home’s routine, and his condition visibly brightened after a short time. His pronounced tendencies toward withdrawal and regression largely receded. His activities nevertheless remained limited to the locality: travelling by public transport to nearby towns without an escort overwhelmed him. At a personal hearing, he spoke positively about his stay in the facility.

In the following years, he lived quietly and apart from others in a single room, leaving it mainly for meals and when the weather was good. His vitality continued to decline. He frequently complained of breathing problems, which worsened with the weather; medical assessments described him as ten to twenty years prematurely aged, with a sharply reduced life expectancy and sexual interest almost at zero. Organ illnesses and his generally weakened condition required medical care.

Deterioration and return to hospital

In 1997, Jensen complained that conditions in the home had worsened and that his health was deteriorating day by day. He strongly wanted to leave, alleging that the home’s management was trying to poison him by releasing toxic fumes into his room at night through the drain and lampshade. For a time, patient listening could calm him, but this ceased to work.

His psychiatrist judged him to be a severely disturbed man suffering from paranoid delusions. The delusional system could not be influenced and had become inaccessible to discussion; against the background of an active psychosis, he was still considered potentially dangerous and in need of immediate inpatient treatment. On October 16, 1998, police officers from the Pönitz station took him to Ochsenzoll General Hospital. He died there on the evening of October 19 from heart and lung disease.

Significance

Scharbeutz is presented as a supervised late-life refuge rather than a release into independent life. The early improvement in the home’s routine coexists with persistent limits on movement, long isolation in a single room, and a continuing dependence on medical oversight. The later poisoning delusion reverses the initial promise of stability: the care home becomes, in Jensen’s account, a source of danger, and his final passage is back to the hospital from which he had been transferred.