WEDDINGS - Here come the BRIDES!

[Vikki]

A telling wartime contingency: proxy weddings, between a groom at the front, and a bride at home. The first is from Hitler's Wartime Picture Magazine: Signal (S.L. Mayer, ed.). In the second photo, from a 9.8.1941 edition of Hamburger Illustrierte (shown in Terry Charman's The German Homefront 1939-1940), the absent bride is represented by a bouquet of roses in her empty chair.

[Heimatschuss]

Hello,

this thread took an interesting twist so even I can add a bit. This Hubmann guy must have been really busy. See attached pic for another proxy wedding where he was present. It also makes clear why such weddings were called Stahlhelm-Hochzeit (steel helmet wedding) by the public. The groom was symbolized by a military helmet during the wedding ceremony.

The ulimate form of this (introduced in Nov. 1941) was the possibility to marry a soldier already dead. Really a bit spooky. This was in most cases conducted because a child was under way and the family (and the authorities) wanted to spare the child the shame of illegitimacy. There were about 25.000 cases of this during WWII.

Picture from: http://www.dhm.de/ausstellungen/lebenss ... /2_127.htm
[If you scroll backwards from the link provided you'll find some other wedding photos.)

General reference: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferntrauung

Best regards
Torsten

[colt45]

WOW! thats interesting, the flowers and the helmet... never knew about that, thanks

[Penn44]

The ulimate form of this (introduced in Nov. 1941) was the possibility to marry a soldier already dead. Really a bit spooky. This was in most cases conducted because a child was under way and the family (and the authorities) wanted to spare the child the shame of illegitimacy. There were about 25.000 cases of this during WWII.
Best regards
Torsten

How was the deceased soldier's paternity of the child established?

Penn44

.

[sylvieK4]

How was the deceased soldier's paternity of the child established?

Penn44

.

Best guess.

[Heimatschuss]

The ulimate form of this (introduced in Nov. 1941) was the possibility to marry a soldier already dead. Really a bit spooky. This was in most cases conducted because a child was under way and the family (and the authorities) wanted to spare the child the shame of illegitimacy. There were about 25.000 cases of this during WWII.
Best regards
Torsten

How was the deceased soldier's paternity of the child established?

Penn44

.

Well,

testimony of the mother-to-be would have been essential I think and then the authorities would start nosing about a bit to learn about her (and his) reputation so they could evaluate the trustworthyness of the claim. Presumably an engagement officially announced would have been rated higher than stories of a one-night stand with a stranger. Authorities probably also checked if the time of conception correlated with the soldier's leave.

Of course there were cases where the family of the child's father was dismayed by the post-mortem marriage fearing that they would have to share their hard-earned belongings with other people. In my father's home village in Silesia a family affected by such a wedding took terrible revenge in 1945 against anybody who had been involved in it. All people from the village administration who had okayed the case disappeared in soviet concentration camps due to false allegations spread by said family.

Best regards
Torsten

[Vikki]

If the parents "married" before the birth of the child--and it is up to the State to determine the definition of "marriage", and in this case that definition allowed marriage to occur after the man's death--the child would be considered legitimate. In the absence of DNA paternity testing at the time, legitimacy was probably about as close as you got. Of course, legitimacy is not always the same thing as paternity....

It may sound odd, but establishment of legitimacy after the death of the father may be done in some U.S. states today in a similar way--without DNA evidence establishing paternity or the intervention of the court, as one would expect. When the couple marries after the birth of the child, their signing an affidavit that he is the father of the child and presenting the marriage certificate is all that is required. If the father dies before signing the affidavit, additional proof may be used instead, such as records listing the man as the child's father or affidavits from close relatives of the father.

The great difference, of course, is that in Germany the State could also make the marriage "retroactive," in a manner of speaking.

I would imagine that similar procedures for legitimating a child administratively may have been available in Germany at the time. And unfortunately, as in wartime Germany, the procedure has found similar use with the deaths of U.S. servicemen in the last few years.

Best,
~Vikki

[colt45]

[snookie]

Here is one for Vikki...long time no see.

Your snookie is back.

[Vikki]

Welcome back! Great photo!

~Vikki

[colt45]

Great RAD wedding

[sylvieK4]

Two more. Bridal party in a horse-drawn carriage:




(Both photos from online auctions.)

[Vikki]

A nonsense post by Penn44 which added nothing of historical interest and replies to it were removed by this moderator.

~Vikki

[Vikki]

I really like that pair of photos, Sylvie! I'd have loved to see the backs of them, to see whether there's a clue to where that wedding occurred.

Best,
~Vikki

[sylvieK4]

The auction didn't say where the pictures were taken, but we do have the first names of the couple (Hilde and Peter), and a date the images were processed by the photo lab. See the slides below:



(Online auction.)