COPYRIGHT 2015 ERIC EUGENE MCKINLEY INTIMATE STRANGERS: INTERMARRIAGE AMONG PROTESTANTS, CATHOLICS, AND JEWS IN GERMANY, 1875-1935 BY ERIC EUGENE MCKINLEY DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Peter Fritzsche, Chair and Director of Research Professor Craig Koslofsky Professor Harry Liebersohn Associate Professor Eugene Avrutin ii Abstract In this dissertation, I examine intermarriage in Germany from 1875, when the Second Reich implemented obligatory civil marriage, to 1935, the year the Third Reich implemented the Nuremberg Laws. At its core are common mixed marriages between Protestants and Catholics, as well as the relatively less common ones between Jews and non-Jews. Like Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish communities themselves, social boundaries shaped these unions and spurred the ways in which their meanings changed over time. One of the principal claims is that “confessional,” “religious,” and “racial” boundaries have to be understood as distinct, overlapping, and changing. Most importantly, what it meant to be German in German history constituted the stakes of crossing these boundaries because the act determined the parameters of belonging and exclusion. The stakes for the historical actors constitute the stakes of this dissertation. I investigate what it meant to be German and who decided that meaning by analyzing the idea and practice of intermarriage over time. Individuals extract identity from boundaries because they create belonging. Acts of intermarriage and the reactions they generated were undertakings of boundary crossing that sparked changes to German identity. Over the course of six decades of boundary crossing examined in this dissertation, the confessional, religious, and racial boundaries themselves transformed, and sometimes overlapped. Intermarriage was central to the process of reducing Protestant and Catholic Germans into “Germans” and excluding Jews from that same category. It was not because the Nazis abolished the boundary between Protestants and Catholics, but because over the course of history individuals and German states established a language and a framework for the coexistence of Protestants and Catholics both intimately and socially. iii Acknowledgments It has to start this way: I have been married to this project for six years. Living with this dissertation has not always been easy, but it has been rewarding. As I write this, that union is not at an end. It is simply at a stage of transition. Here is something that will not change as the dissertation begins its transformation into a book: the chapters that follow show that marriage is a social construct that is always changing. While I have been occupied with non-normative marriage and what that has to do with the evolution of national identity in German history, that same issue has pervaded in the United States. When I began working on this project, same sex couples could marry in three states in the union. As I write this, that figure now stands at 37 (and Washington D.C.). On the one hand, that is incredible progress. On the other hand, it is 13 states short. I am comforted by my confidence that by the time this dissertation completes its metamorphosis into a book, that number will be 50. This project could not have been completed without the help of my teachers. I owe the largest intellectual debt to my dissertation advisor, Peter Fritzsche, whose patience and encouragement shepherded this project from conception to completion. Eugene Avrutin, a second dissertation advisor in contribution if not in name, has also been there every step of the way. Both read and commented on more chapter drafts than one could reasonably expect. They shaped this project in countless ways, even if not every one of their excellent bits of feedback made it into the final draft. I want to thank Harry Liebersohn for his sharp insights when this project was at its early, critical, stages. Craig Koslofsky was a late-joining member of my dissertation committee. Yet, his feedback has been invaluable for conceptualizing what this project is going to look like next. iv Beyond my dissertation committee, I want to thank Mark Micale, Clare Crowston, and Antoinette Burton for challenging me to be a better scholar, teacher, and to think harder about things. Enormous gratitude is reserved for Matti Bunzl. As director of the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, Matti was supportive of my work and me in numerous ways. While Matti has since pursued new professional exploits, the important program he helped grow is in the good hands of myriad others who deserve mention here: Craig Alexander, Brett Kaplan, Bruce Rosenstock, Harriet Murav, and Michael Rothberg. The people without whom the Department of History at the University of Illinois could not function, the office staff, deserve a special thanks. Never did I request assistance that was not promptly offered, nor did I ever ask a question that was not answered in a timely manner. There are too many individuals who helped me along the way to name here. I’ll settle on recognizing the graduate secretaries who, respectively, ushered me in to and out of the Department of History, Elaine Sampson and Shannon Croft. And I would be remiss not to offer a very grateful thank you to the department’s Business Manager, Tom Bedwell, who assisted me on countless occasions during my time at Illinois. I would never have even been in the position to succeed as a graduate student at the University of Illinois if it weren’t for the teachers I had as an undergraduate at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak Community College. I owe the biggest thanks to Rob Sackett and Paul Harvey. They were the first to show me what it is, and what it can be, to be a historian. I’m happy that I still count them both as friends. I also could not have done without the learning experiences I had from Rick Wunderli, Chris Hill, Christina Jimenez, Karen Wagner, and Wayne Artis. A teacher, friend, mentor, and confidante, I especially want to thank v Traci Freeman. She put a large stamp on my writing, and thus she has played a key role in every word of this dissertation, even though she hasn’t read any of them. At the University of Illinois, I benefitted from a revolving cast of intellectually curious German historians who overlapped with me at some point in graduate school, including Will Morris, Jason Hansen, Kristen Ehrenberger, Tyler Carrington, Andrew Demshuk, and Zachary Riebeling. I’d like to extend a special thanks to Scott Harrison and Jeff Hayton for reading my work even when our monthly German Colloquium meeting did not mandate it. Outside of the University of Illinois, thanks to Devlin Scofield for being a reliable conference companion. The following institutions funded the study, language training, research, and writing portions of my graduate career, and they each deserve gratitude here: the Graduate College at the University of Illinois, the University of Illinois’ Department of History, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, Matthias Frenz and the Leo Baeck Fellowship Program of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, the Program in Jewish Culture and Society’s Gendell Family and Shiner Family Fellowship and the John Klier Memorial Prize, and the Tobor Family Fellowship. My research in Germany could not have been completed without the assistance of archivists and librarians in Germany. In Berlin, the staffs at the Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, the Staatsbibliothek, the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, and the Jüdisches Museum provided me access to the material from which this entire project is built—so too did the staffs at the Historisches Archiv des Erzbistums Köln, the Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln, and the Archiv der Evangelischen Kirche im Rheinland in Düsseldorf. I’d also like to thank both the Pfarrarchiv St. Marien/Bonn and the St. Marien Pfarrarchiv in Bonn. If you have trouble vi distinguishing the two, I did as well on a rainy day in Germany in 2012. Yet the confusion still yielded valuable material. I have been privileged to present my research and receive feedback from wonderful scholars both in the United States and in Germany. For this, I would like to recognize Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, Andreas Gotzmann, and the Arbeitergemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Institut for inviting me to a productive summer colloquium for graduate students; Columbia University’s Institute for Israeli and Jewish Studies Young Scholars Conference; and Ben Frommer and the Holocaust Educational Foundation’s summer institute, which was not technically a space to present my research, but nevertheless has proven to shape such pursuits in unexpected ways. Among the best aspects of being a Leo Baeck Fellow were the two group meetings held in Germany during the academic year 2011-2012. During these, I gained valuable insights from Daniel Wildmann, Raphel Gross, Josh Teplitzky, Anne Clara Schenderlein, Golan Gur, and Avi Siluk. I have also had the great fortune to sit on German Studies Association panels with Ari Joskowicz, Lisa Zwicker, and Gabriel Cooper, among others. I owe my friends a great deal for being supportive and providing an environment where I don’t have to think about intermarriage, or German history, or Jewish history. I owe my family even more. Thanks to my mom, my grandma, and my uncle, in particular. What you see below is what I’ve been doing for the past several years. I wish my grandfather were here to see me achieve this goal I set out to do some years ago. But I know he would have been proud. Most of all, thanks to JB, who doesn’t need to read an explanation why.