Miriam Gebhardt - Crimes Unspoken - The Rape of German Women at the End of the Second World War

Ways should therefore be sought to compensate for this hardship: ‘We owe this to the unfortunate German women and girls who have living proof every day of the time of their most profound humiliation as women.’ [77] BA Koblenz B/126/5548, Applications to the Federal Ministry of Finance to grant compensation for rapes before 1 August and outside the federal territory; letter of 5 March 1951.

Very few politicians and administrators shared this view initially. It was not denied that many children had been conceived as a result of rape and could therefore be considered by extension as victims of war or its consequences, but the assumption that the state should be responsible for these ‘unasked-for’ children was incorrect, argued the opponents. The mother was still connected biologically to the unwanted child and was therefore responsible for its upbringing and welfare.

Once it had been unleashed, the discussion would not be reined in. Individual women and husbands who felt they had been betrayed personally approached authorities and politicians to assert their financial claims and also to restore their honour. In June 1951, M. K. from Bremen submitted a disciplinary complaint against the Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims as he had not replied to several applications by her. She came from East Prussia and had attempted in vain to escape in January 1945 with her parents and siblings. Her mother had died in February 1945 and her father had starved to death two years later. In September 1945 she had been raped by a Russian soldier in Sellwethen in East Prussia (now Yegoryevskoye) in the presence of her sisters. She had been twenty-two at the time and ‘intact’. On 19 April 1946 her son Hans-Dieter was born. Now, after having been accepted in West Germany as a late returnee, she was treated like ‘just any unmarried mother’. She couldn’t understand that the state helped those who had lost a family member as a result of the war but not those who had gained one for the same reason. She felt herself to be just as much a victim of the war as those who had suffered physical injury or material loss. It was particularly important for her not to be lumped together with women who in her eyes had merely ‘fraternized’.

The women and girls who threw themselves into the arms of the advancing troops in return for chocolate or cigarettes and ended up with a child as a result were treated no differently than I am. This is a debasement of my status that I oppose. I am not just one of the large number of unmarried mothers but in a special category of war victims and demand that the state does not deny me this moral recognition. [78] BA Koblenz B/126/5548, Application to the Federal Ministry of the Interior of 12 June 1951, maintenance for children resulting from rape by the enemy.

The combination of the fate of displaced persons and ethical principles produced a rhetoric in which flight and expulsion from the former German east were used as a decisive argument to distinguish the women concerned from those who had allegedly ‘thrown themselves into the arms’ of the Western Allies. This is possibly the only legitimate explanation for the self-assurance of the raped mothers. E. B. from Middle Franconia wrote in April 1951 to Elly Heuss-Knapp, wife of the President at the time, that she had been driven out of Upper Silesia ‘like an animal’; ‘We were at the mercy of these brutes, whose outrages did not stop at old women and children.’ Her daughter Ingrid, whom no one was looking after, was the result of rape. She received a war widow’s pension of 27 marks and could not earn anything to supplement it as she was severely physically handicapped as a result of what she had endured. She received 18 marks per month for her daughter. She didn’t know how she could feed and clothe the children. [79] BA Koblenz B/126/5548, letter of 27 April 1951.

The subject was also debated in parliament. The SPD member for Bielefeld and ‘mother of the constitution’ Frieda Nadig spoke up in particular for the rape victims and asked whether the children could be granted assistance. [80] SPD press service, August 1856. Nadig was a member of the Committee for the British Occupation Zone. She was appointed to the Parliamentary Council in 1948 and worked on the Basic Law. She was one of the women responsible for Article 3 (Equality before the law) and she fought, albeit without success, for equal pay for men and women for equal work and for equality before the law for illegitimate children. The problem of foisting the matter on the welfare authorities ignored the human tragedy suffered by these women, since the decision by a raped woman nevertheless to bear the child was a sign of a deep-seated morality. But the Federal Ministry of the Interior considered the existing welfare arrangement sufficient, prompting the Bielefeld Freie Presse to comment that this was a miserable answer.

The case of pregnancy following rape by an American soldier also came before the parliamentary Petition Committee. P. S. from Heroldsberg near Nuremberg stated on 22 November 1955 that her daughter B. S. had been raped in Nuremberg on 4 August 1946 at the age of nineteen by the American soldier A. W. H. She had given birth to a daughter. The application for compensation of 45,000 marks submitted to Claims Office Team 7728 on 31 January 1950 had been refused for substantive reasons. The father of the victim, as the child’s guardian, then wrote to the Federal President and various federal ministries requesting maintenance for his ward and compensation for his daughter. He was informed that compensation was possible only if the child’s mother had been physically injured or her health impaired. The Law on Compensation for Occupation Damage did not allow for compensation for the costs incurred by the mother for maintenance and education of the child resulting from rape, since the law only provided for reimbursement of the costs incurred through an increase in the victim’s needs, for example as a result of health treatment. The child itself could not demand any compensation either because there was no case of damage to be compensated, since the child had not been physically injured or its health impaired by the rape. The damage incurred by the child because the biological father did not pay maintenance was not occupation damage. [81] To the Petition Committee of the German Bundestag, 27 July 1956, Occupation Damage, application by Paul Skriewe, Heroldsberg bei Nürnberg of 22 November 1955, BHStaA MInn 81085.

But the resistance from within the administration began to crumble as it came under increasing pressure from another debate, namely the restoration of family values. The mood ultimately swung in favour of compensation for forced motherhood. In North Rhine-Westphalia the regional welfare associations decided to offer special welfare payments to raped women and girls, available even if the legitimacy of the child was not disputed by the husband of the raped woman but his income and assets made it unreasonable for him to have to support the child alone. In this way, it was argued, ‘the child could remain in some cases in the family without the legitimacy being disputed by the husband and the child having to be put in a home’. [82] BayHStA MInn, 81085, suppl. no. 1 to 6726. In a memorandum to the regional authorities, the Federal Ministry of the Interior also now considered it desirable to help families generously in cases where the wives or mothers could credibly demonstrate that they had been the innocent victims of rape. This was the responsibility of the welfare authorities at the regional level.

In my opinion, this change of attitude by the federal decision-makers did not come about because of the justified concerns at the legal situation of children resulting from rape. The rape victims and their emotional state was not the focus either. The politicians and officials were most concerned about protecting the family, which in the 1950s was of great significance in the discussion in West Germany about the restoration of moral values. The decisive argument was that husbands should not be expected to finance children of rape that were not their own, since otherwise the family could well break down, leading to even more single women and illegitimate children as a result.