GG Kolloquium: All About Love? The History of Child Adoption in Germany Post-1945

Stories about adoption are widespread and they come in many different guises: as stories of rescue or abuse, as stories of family secrets and disclosures, as stories of a long search for identity and origins – but rarely as the story of an indistinguishably "normal" family. What kinds of stories are (un-)told and what is the history of child adoption about?

My current research project sets about to shed light into the post-1945 history of child adoption in Germany West and East. The presentation will focus on how the book I am writing is to be constructed and which role the history of love plays within the "storyline".

Oral history interviews are key to the book and I will discuss the challenges this approach to the history of child adoption and love encounters.

^{Bettina Hitzer is professor of history and ethics of medicine at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. She is the author of The History of Cancer & Emotions in Twentieth-Century Germany (Oxford UP, 2022) and co-editor, with Rob Boddice, of Feeling Dis-ease in Modern History (Bloomsbury, 2022) and, with Benedikt Stuchtey, In unsere Mitte genommen. Adoption im 20. Jahrhundert (Wallstein, 2022). She is currently working on a project researching the history of child adoption in Germany (1945/9–2000).}