ABSTRACT

Intermarriage was a key site for testing politics of difference within the multicultural German Empire. Across the German states in the mid-nineteenth century, marriage between members of different religions frequently proved impossible. Until various civil marriage laws were introduced between the 1840s and 1870s, marriage remained within the remit of the church. As a consequence, marrying across confessional lines was rarely permitted. The implications were clear: marriage was seen as the embodiment of one’s culture – defined primarily in confessional (alongside socio-economic) terms, and it was also viewed as a key transmitter of culture by producing new generations of faithful observers of particular denominations. As a country divided between three confessions, religion in mid- to late nineteenth-century Germany proved an important aspect of difference within the new German nation state. By the end of the nineteenth century, following the introduction of civil marriage, mass waves of migration, the growth of urbanization and the expansion of the German overseas empire, the connotation of ‘mixed marriage’ in Germany appeared to have shifted. It remained a code for crossing confessional lines, but its resonance had changed. By the late nineteenth century, ‘mixed marriage’ had come to characterize another kind of cultural mixing as well: that between races, both at home within Germany and abroad within its colonies and diasporic outposts. And, between 1905 and 1912, ‘mixed marriage’ between Germans and ‘natives’ had been banned in German Southwest Africa, East Africa and Samoa. Why and how was intermarriage a flashpoint in debates on German identity politics at the turn of the twentieth century? As this article shows, intermarriage in the German Empire mattered to families, broader communities, and legislators because it was a pivotal means through which social groups formed, interacted and maintained boundaries at a time when visions of Germany were expanding.

摘要

通婚是测试多元文化德意志帝国内部差异政治的一个重要场所。在19世纪中叶，整个德国各州之间，不同宗教成员之间的婚姻常常被证明是不可能的。在1840年代和1870年代之间引入各种民事婚姻法之前，婚姻一直属于教会的职权范围。结果，很少允许跨across悔的婚姻。含义很明显：婚姻被视为一种文化的体现，主要是在悔（以及社会经济）术语下定义的，并且通过培养新一代特定教派的忠实观察者，婚姻也被视为文化的主要传播者。作为一个由三个供认决定的国家，十九世纪中叶至晚期的德国宗教在新的德国民族国家内部证明了差异的重要方面。到19世纪末，随着引入公证婚姻，大规模的移民潮，城市化的发展以及德国海外帝国的扩张，德国“混血婚姻”的含义似乎已经发生了变化。它仍然是跨越crossing悔界线的准则，但其共鸣发生了变化。到19世纪末，“混血婚姻”也成为另一种文化融合的特征：种族之间的差异，无论是在德国国内还是国外，在其殖民地和散居在外的哨所。并且，在1905年至1912年之间，德国西南非洲，东非和萨摩亚禁止了德国人与“原住民”之间的“混血婚姻”。二十世纪初，为什么通婚成为德国身份政治辩论的焦点？正如本文所显示的那样，德意志帝国的通婚对家庭，更广泛的社区和立法者都至关重要，因为在德国的视野不断扩大之时，这是社会团体形成，互动和维护边界的关键手段。