Shifting Racial Boundaries and Their Limits. German Women, Non-European Men, and the Negotiation of Sexuality and Intimacy in Nazi Germany

Christoph Lorke

doi:10.3390/genealogy4010030

Abstract

This essay examines the cultural, ethnic, and “racial” boundaries of the National Socialist “Volksgemeinschaft” based on planned, failed, and completed marriages between German women and non-European men in the early twentieth century. From evidence in the relevant files from the Federal Archives and the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office, this essay discusses male partners from various countries of origin as examples of the role of the state in racially mixed unions. The reactions of the institutional actors and the couples themselves demonstrated the surprising ambivalence of National Socialist racial policy due to political and diplomatic requirements.

Highlights

At the turn of the twentieth century, German authorities faced increasing instances when German women wished to marry foreign partners
The authorities were usually displeased with male partners from non-European countries of origin and often rejected their applications for licenses
The mainsprings of these tangible expressions of rivalry were xenophobia and ethnocentrism. Such prejudices explained the construction of the “otherness” of the “other” to include marriage partners, at least when they were male, from outside Germany (Bauman 2000, p. 214)

Summary

Introduction

At the turn of the twentieth century, German authorities faced increasing instances when German women wished to marry foreign partners. The authorities were usually displeased with male partners from non-European countries of origin and often rejected their applications for licenses The mainsprings of these tangible expressions of rivalry (economic, as well as sexual) were xenophobia and ethnocentrism. The German civil status system developed mechanisms to deal “appropriately” with marriages to foreigners in the 1880s. Genealogy 2020, 4, 30 used various factors (origin, ethnicity, age, gender) to determine the conditions for participation in the community Their power emerged from their place in the bureaucracy, and because marriages with foreigners came under personal status law during the period under study. Court of the local territory decided whether to issue an exemption Both registrars and Presidents gained tremendous power as soon as civil marriage began (Lorke 2017, 2018a). I show the Nazi racial hierarchies of non-Jewish persons and the gap between rhetoric and reality, and the effectiveness of indirect methods in achieving the state’s goals

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Conclusions