Paula Schmitt married Bernhard Klingenberg (1883–1944), a mason, on 11 July 1907. The couple had nine children.
Paula Augustina Klingenberg lived with her husband, the sons Wilhelm, Edmund and Heinrich and the daughter Johanna from 8 June 1934 to 12 May 1943 at Lindenstrasse 32. The house was destroyed in an aerial bombing raid in 1943. The couple then lived with the daughter at Augustastrasse 7. As the former Lindenstrasse, located near Königswall, no longer exists because of the alterations made to the city centre, the “Stolperstein” is placed on Augustastrasse.

After being previously treated in Dortmund’s Johanneshospita, Paula Klingenberg was transferred on 14 January 1944 to the psychiatric clinic of the city hospital (“Städtische Krankenanstalten”). According to the medical diagnosis, Paula Klingenberg was physically fit, but mentally “disorientated, sometimes restless, vociferous and agitated”. She is reported to have suffered from paranoia, felt persecuted, believed the “police were standing by the bed, and she would be beheaded”.
On 5 April 1944, the local police authority consented to Paula Klingenberg being committed “as an insane person constituting a danger to the general public” to the Provinzialheilanstalt Aplerbeck, a mental institution, where she was admitted one day later.
In the Provinzialheilanstalt Aplerbeck, she survived for only five days. It must be assumed that she fell victim to the “wilde Euthanasie”, a bout of uncontrolled killing of patients by the Nazis.

Paula Klingenberg died in the Provinzialheilanstalt Aplerbeck at 3 o’clock in the morning of 11 April 1944. The cause of death was given as “Arteriosclerosis of the brain”.
Paula Klingenberg was buried in Dortmund’s main cemetery (“Hauptfriedhof”, Section D-133, No. 194–195) on 14 April 1944 at 12.15 p.m.