Reclaimed Pasts: Intermarriage and Remembrances of National Socialist Racial Stigmatization by Jewish and non-Jewish Spouses and Mischling Children

Abstract

One of the ways in which the National Socialist state sought to achieve its linked aims to consolidate German unity in preparation for war and to exclude Jews from every aspect of German life was by the reinterpretation of family histories using its taxonomy of difference. This effort is a less commonly recognized aspect of the Blood Protection Law and its subsequent clarifications; the orientation toward future marriage regulations required a revision of past marriages and what they meant. This article argues that post-war narratives from individuals whom the regime targeted because they were intermarried need to be read as reassertions of narrative authority that directly challenge the way National Socialism recast such families in German history. Specifically, the experiences were diverse and informed by memory as well as context. The article posits that the variability of memory is evident in the memoirs written by Heinz Freudenthal, who was Jewish and married to a non-Jewish woman; Brigitte Steiner, who was non-Jewish but married to a Jewish man; and Elsbeth von Ameln, who was the daughter of a man the state classified as Jewish and a non-Jewish woman.