Normative Konfliktlagen: Eheschließungen mit AusländerInnen in Deutschland als administrative und interkulturelle Herausforderung (ca. 1900–1930)

Abstract

Abstract The article deals with the role of the registry office and registrars in the legal implementation of binational or intercultural marriages in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, from the turn of the 20th century until the 1930s. As the article shows, these marriage applications posed a manifold challenge for the actors involved; on the one hand, in dealing with “strangeness” and, on the other, in the administrative-bureaucratic synchronization of legal and social norms. Above all, the question of gender relations, demographic fears, and eurocentrist as well as racist ideas were ultimately decisive for the perception and handling of such couple constellations and had a massive influence on the scope of action for both the fiancées and the registrars.