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Submitted by: Liz Ten Dyke <etendyke@email.gc.cuny.edu> I am working on some oral history interviews for my doctoral dissertation and I have encountered a gap in my knowledge about Nazi Germany (not surprising since I am neither a historian nor a specialist on this subject). In one interview an elderly woman related her story of waking up from an "Ehetauglichkeitsuntersuchung" in a clinic. Subsequently she received a "Mutter Karte" for a few months but then "nichts mehr." She realized that she would not be able to have children. After the war she sought out the doctors who had, presumably, sterilized her. The medical records had been destroyed during bombings and she was able to locate only one of the doctors who, because of his advanced age, was not able to recall the details of her case. Despite subsequent efforts by physicians to bring everything "wieder in Ordnung" she was never able to bear children. I have consulted the two (admittedly few) sources I have at hand on women in Nazi Germany--Koonz's _Mothers in the Fatherland_ and Bridenthal et al. (eds.) _When Biology became Destiny_. Honestly I am not even sure what I am searching for but I would like to know: Are there sources (e.g. an informative article) on the bureaucracy and politics of the approval of marriages? (In this case the woman was white, "Aryan" and physically and mentally healthy. She was, however, the daughter of a local communist leader and was engaged to an officer in the Wehrmacht. Both the woman's father and her fiance's superiors had objected to the engagement but the couple persisted.) How often were healthy "Aryan" women subjected to forcible sterilization? To what extent were political considerations (being the daughter of a communist leader) a factor in the decision to sterilize a woman? I fear these questions truly reveal my ignorance but what were "mother cards"? To whom, and under what circumstances, where they distributed or withheld? What rights or privileges did they confer? I would be grateful for any help! Liz Ten Dyke Department of Anthropology The Graduate School, CUNY
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