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Documents - Family, Sexuality and Nation: West Germany
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1.   Walther von Hollander on the Breakdown of Marriages, Separation, Divorce (1946)
For most Germans, the immediate postwar period was marked by profound material hardship, which was often made worse by the breakdown of personal relationships, as evidenced by the spike in the divorce....
2.   Walther von Hollander, Women’s Issues – Women’s Worries (1946)
The upheavals of World War II and the immediate postwar period disrupted traditional gender roles and expectations in manifold ways. In 1946, columnist and radio host Walter von Hollander reported....
3.   The Psychological and Physical Condition of Prisoners of War Returning from the East (undated report)
At the end of World War II, millions of German men were being held as prisoners of war in Allied camps. While the Western Allies released their prisoners fairly quickly, the Soviet Union put its....
4.   Debate of the Bill by Deputy August Schwingenstein (CSU) and Others in the Bavarian Landtag [State Parliament] Concerning the Protection of Youth against Immoral Influences (1948)
Protecting youth in the face of the eroding authority of familial and social structures was a central topic of discussion in the postwar era. In March 1948, the many and varied causes of the crisis....
5.   From a Lecture by Oberstudiendirektor Kurt Hahn at a Sex Education Workshop for Young People at Jugendburg Bilstein/Sauerland (September 14, 1950)
The erosion of familial and social structures during the war and the postwar period, as well as the direct contact with occupying soldiers, refugees, and so on, meant that many young Germans were....
6.   Newspaper Article about Children of African-American Members of the Allied Forces (1951)
From 1945 to 1955, tens of thousands of occupation children were born in West Germany. They were the children of German women and foreign occupation soldiers and were usually born out of wedlock.....
7.   Emil Schäfer on the Person and Tasks of the Federal Minister of Family Affairs (1953)
Following the electoral victory of a CDU-led Christian-bourgeois coalition in 1953, a new Federal Ministry for Family, Youth, and Health was set up. The government wanted to strengthen the family....
8.   "The Last Soldiers of the Great War": Article from Die Zeit (October 13, 1955)
One result of Chancellor Adenauer’s trip to Moscow in the fall of 1955 was the release of the last 10,000 German prisoners of war from Soviet labor camps. Their arrival at the Friedland reception....
9.   The Academic Success of Negermischlinge ["Mixed-race Negroes"]. Study by the Institute for Natural and Humanistic Anthropology (1956)
Between 1945 and 1955, tens of thousands of occupation children were born in West Germany as the result of sexual relationships between German women and foreign occupation soldiers. In the mid-fifties,....
10.   The Illegitimate Children of Members of the Occupying Forces in the Federal Republic and in West Berlin (1956)
In the mid-1950s, West Germany’s Federal Office of Statistics sought to collect reliable data on the children born since 1945 to German women and foreign occupation soldiers, mostly Americans. The....
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