The Hamburg Archives has posted to their website a notice that they weeded
medical certificates of death during the second quarter of 2018. The time
frame of the medical certificates covered >from 1876-1953. Retrospective
weeding of the years 1837-1875 occurred in 1990. There were over one
million individual sheets in the destruction. Usually, the death
certificates would have been issued under the supervision of the authority
responsible for the medical system. The archives states the documents were
in poor condition and they could not guarantee their permanent preservation.
Originally, the documents were stored as "alternatives" to death civil
registers not having yet reached the Hamburg State Archives.

Archive legislation covering birth, death and marriage civil registers were
transferred since 2009 to the State Archives meant that death
information-including data and place of death, marital status, name of
person registering the death- could be ascertained directly >from the death
registers.

Further rationale as to why the Archives decided to destroy the death
certificates are included in the notice. The notice includes a chart
comparing data elements for death certificates and registers of death. Page
three of the notice also provides information on how one can determine dates
of birth missing >from the death register, and possible research into causes
of death.

See:
https://www.hamburg.de/contentblob/11526092/419b169f1436bf2e6ce81b44877bb9a9/data/todesbescheinigungen-en.pdf
It is also available in German at:
https://www.hamburg.de/contentblob/11441562/0c94298433b7e6d18f86ae54c7ad2035/data/todesbescheinigungen.pdf
Thank you to Teven Laxer, member of IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring
Committee for providing this information.

Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee