Hello rockifivethree-ga,
Thank you for the opportunity to research a very interesting question.
The fate of children of war is getting more attention than ever
before. There are also many organizations that are helping adoptees
find their birth parents, no matter what their national origin. The
foreign baby boomer children of the GIs who gave their name to a
generation are now seeking to make sense of their personal history and
the countries where they were born are paying special attention. The
children of the black GIs who served in Europe are a special group
whose history is just gaining scholarly attention. They were called
“occupation children” “Besatzungskindern” “Mischlingskinder” and
worse. You asked about the German “Brown Babies”but I found that these
children aroused special concerns in other countries as well.
As Germany is beginning to deal with its growing Afro-German
population, there has been increasing interest in the post-war
generation of “Brown Babies.” I recommend that you begin your
investigations with the current wave of material that is just becoming
available. I don’t know if you’re able to read German, but I’ve
included a couple of key resources that might be worth your time even
if you don’t.
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My search revealed that there is one person who is leading the
investigation of the issues surrounding the “Brown Babies.” Her name
is Dr. Yara C. Lemke Muniz de Faria and she is a professor at the
Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Freie Universität Berlin. She has
just published a book that will answer all your questions and more.
She can be contacted at:
http://www.medizin.fu-berlin.de/igm/english/staff/muniz.htm
Dr. Yara Colette Lemke Muniz de Faria
Tel +49-30-830092-52
muniz@medizin.fu-berlin.de
Her book is available from Amazon, Germany. She also has a chapter in
a recent book from University of Michigan Press.
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3932482751/qid=1044010622/sr=2-1/ref=sr_aps_prod_1_1/028-9585315-1301365
Zwischen Fürsorge und Ausgrenzung: Afrodeutsche "Besatzungskinder" im
Nachkriegs-Deutschland
von Yara-Col Lemke Muniz de Faria
Broschiert - Metropol
Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
ISBN: 3932482751
http://141.211.86.203/FMPro?-db=s-main.fp5&-lay=all&-format=book-blurbs.html&-error=error.html&control=09682&-find
"Blacks, Germans, and the Politics of imperially imagination,
1920-1960" chapter in the book
The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy
Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 1998
She has been a speaker and participated at many conferences dealing
with the role of minorities in Germany and has published several works
that might be of interest to you, including:
http://www.medizin.fu-berlin.de/igm/publikationen/muniz.htm
"'Germany's Brown Baby Must Be Helped! Will You?' US American
Adoptions of Afro-German Children, 1950-1955. In: Black Voices Against
Social Exclusion, hrsg. v. Anette Wierschke und Tina Campt, Sonderheft
Callalloo (im Druck).
http://doc-iep.univ-lyon2.fr/wwi/article.php3?id_article=140
Conference : German history from the margins
Yara-Colette Lemke Muniz de FARIA (Institut für Geschichte der
Medizin, Freie Universität Berlin) : Germany's Brown Babies,1945-1960
- Symbol of Democracy
http://www.tu-berlin.de/presse/ringvl/02_ss/sonstige.htm
30. Mai 2002, Thema: Afrodeutsche "Besatzungskinder" im
Nachkriegsdeutschland
http://home.t-online.de/home/dombaj/isdinfo.htm
Subject: Afrodeutsche "Besatzungskinder" zwischen allen Stühlen
Another expert you might want to get in touch with is a professor at
Emory University, Dr. Heide Fehrenbach is a professor of history who
specializes in post-war Germany. Watch for her forthcoming book on
“brown babies.”
http://www.emory.edu/HISTORY/faculty/fehrenbach.html
Currently writing Race in German Reconstruction: African-American
Occupation Children and Postwar Discourses of Democracy, 1945-1965.
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I found quite a lot of information for you and I’ve organized the
material using your questions as the headings. I hope this will give
you an idea of what is available and who else is interested in this
very special group.
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The "Afro Magazine", October 6,1953 and "Hue" Magazine in this same
period of time published articles about "German Brown Babies" having
been adopted by American Afro-Americans. What other publications in
Germany or the U.S. (like: Life, Look, The New York Herald, etc...)
carried articles on the same topic (I request: Publication Name, Vol,
Year, Page)?
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I had to go to the library to find articles dating back to the postwar
years. These articles are not available free on the Web. What I found
is very interesting. The tone and attitude of some of the articles
reflects the racist attitudes of the times.
Strangers to Their Own: No Happy Ending Is in Sight for Three Thousand
American-German Children of Negro Blood
Commonweal, 58: 219-21, June 5, 1953
Letters to the Editor responding to Strangers to Their Own
Commonweal, 58: 443-4, August 7, 1953
From Austria: The Children’s Own UN
Commonweal, 54: 403-4, August 3, 1951
Facts About the GI Babies by J. A. Mitchner
Reader’s Digest, 64: 5-10, May 1954
I was surprised that I couldn’t find anything on these children in the
popular press. There were several articles dealing with mixed race
children from Japan and Korea in Life magazine and Christian Century.
---------------------------------------------------------
I’m also including some papers, articles and Web sites that are more
recent but provide a great deal of information to help you understand
the situation of the Afro-American GI babies and their current
situation.
http://newstribune.com/stories/071600/opi_0716000024.asp
Sunday, July 16, 2000
Seeking an unusual kinship
She was named Ursula at birth, a German baby girl who looked anything
but.
It was just after the end of World War II, and her U.S. soldier father
and her German mother had had a brief but productive fling. … First of
all, her father was black. That made her a biracial baby in a country
that for years had been trying to "purify" the race.
http://hometown.aol.com/wmlgage/gd/gd.htm
Geborener Deutscher (which means “German by birth”) is a quarterly
newsletter that addresses the issues, interests and concerns of
German-born adoptees (and their birth/adoptive families).
http://members.aol.com/wmlgage/gd/gd-046.htm
A,Little Brown Baby: An Afro_German Adoptee’s Story
http://www.ibiblio.org/uncpress/chapters/hohn_gis.html
GIs and Fräuleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950s West Germany
by Maria Höhn, Copyright (c) 2002 by the University of North Carolina
Press.
Historians of postwar Germany have only recently begun to explore how
racial hierarchies continued to inform notions of German identity.
Exciting new scholarship on German reactions to American popular
culture and German policies toward the children born of German mothers
and African American fathers make important contributions to the
field.
http://zeitgeschichte.uni-linz.ac.at/modern.history.linz/007.pdf
This is a 12 page paper analyzing a novel that reflects on the
experiences of Austrian “brown babies.”
http://www.image-at.com/salzburg/5510.htm
"Austrian occupation children adopted by American couples..."
1,899 children fathered by American occupation soldiers have been born
out of wedlock since 1945 in the province of Salzburg alone. Of these
illegitimate children, 335 have been adopted or have achieved
legitimate status through subsequent marriages.
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/U/untold/programs/babies/page2.html
Brown Babies (British) tells the story of people who, like Denny, have
been denied their birthright because they are of mixed race. In almost
every case, the experiences and circumstances of these children are a
result of racial prejudice inflicted on both their parents, for which
they can take no responsibility.
http://www.thehistorychannel.co.uk/listings/January/14.htm
TUESDAY 14 JANUARY 2003 ON THE HISTORY CHANNEL
10.00 BROWN BABIES -- The touching tale of the babies born to white
British women and black American soldiers during WWII. Some were never
told of their past whilst others spent a lifetime in care.
http://www.korpios.org/resurgent/L-IQgapgenetic.htm
Myth: The black/white IQ gap is largely genetically caused.
===================================================================
How many Brown Babies entered the U.S.A. from Germany between between
1945 and 1953? Note: Brown Babies were known to be of interracial or
transracial origin.
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I haven’t been able to track down any numbers on how many of the
“brown babies” made it to the USA or were adopted outside Germany. I
found several sources for how many were born in Germany and these
figures can be compared to the total number of US “occupation
children.”
http://www.austria.org/oldsite/jun99/fun.html
When the first year of occupation was over, 90,000 had already been
born in the American zone of Germany alone. … More often than not the
Chocolate Girls were reviled as Ami-Huren (Ami-whores) and their
offspring as Besatzungskinder (occupation children). One does not need
too much to imagine what these women and their children had to endure,
especially when the father was a black GI.
http://www.aicgs.org/publications/PDF/hopkins.pdf
“What has become of the 94,000 ‘Occupation Babies’?” “among the
occupation babies, the 3,093 Negro mulattoes form a special group,
presenting a human and racial problem of a special nature …”
http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/children.htm
THE CHILDREN THEY LEFT BEHIND
Over 1 million American troops were stationed in England … This
figure includes approximately 130,000 black GIs. By the end of the
Second World War an estimated 20,000 children had been born as the
result of relationships between British women and American GIs.
Approximately 1,000 of these children were black.
http://home.t-online.de/home/dombaj/isdinfo.htm
Alarmiert durch die Geburt von etwa 1500 dunkelhäutigen Kindern (von
insgesamt 21000 Besatzungskindern) (1500 brown babies from total
21,000 occupations children)
==================================================================
By what authority (law) did Germany cooperate with the U.S. after the
War to assist in the streamlining the adoptions of Brown Babies to the
U.S.? I am looking for a War babies Relief Act or something like it in
Germany which was linked with an "Act" of some type in the U.S.A.
promoting the adoption of these children from Germany.
------------------------------------------------------------------
I have not found any evidence that the children of black GIs received
special preferences for admission to the United States. On the
contrary, it seems that there was quite a lot of opposition expressed
during the debates leading up to the passage of the McCarren-Walter
Act, a major revision of the immigration laws in 1952. During the
post-war years there were many new laws passed to admit special
classes of displaced persons and refugees and to exclude people
considered dangerous. A quick review of the history of immigration
laws shows you how many racial restrictions were imposed through the
years and how long it took to abolish them.
http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/children.htm
After the war ended there was continued debate about possible
solutions to the "brown baby" problem, as it was called. One
suggestion seriously considered and promoted by the black community
leaders in America, was the possibility of some children being shipped
to the US and placed for adoption with black families in the States.
There was strong opposition, however, from conservatives quarters in
the US. In a particularly heated debate in the House, one American
Representative described the children as, ". . . the offsprings of the
scum of the British Isles." In the end the proposal did not go ahead.
http://www.closeup.org/immigrat.htm
U.S. Immigration Policy
This site gives a succinct review of the history of US Immigration
policies
http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/aboutins/statistics/legishist/505.htm
70. Act of August 19, 1950 (64 Statutes-at-Large 464)
Made spouses and minor children of members of the American armed
forces, regardless of the alien’s race, eligible for immigration and
nonquota status if marriage occurred before March 19, 1952.
http://www.ins.usdoj.gov/graphics/aboutins/statistics/legishist/index.htm
Immigration and Naturalization Legislation from the Statistical
Yearbook
The following compilation of federal immigration and naturalization
statutes in the United States provides an overview of the legislative
history of immigration to the United States.
See the list of laws passed after World War II. I don’t believe any
special provisions were many for the immigration of the “occupation
children” or “brown babies.” Some of the provisions that may have come
into play in their entry into the US include:
65. Act of July 1, 1948 (62 Statutes-at-Large 1206)
Amended the Immigration Act of 1917. Provisions:
68. Act of June 16, 1950 (64 Statutes-at-Large 219)
Amended the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. Provisions:
70. Act of August 19, 1950 (64 Statutes-at-Large 464)
Made spouses and minor children of members of the American armed
forces, regardless of the alien’s race, eligible for immigration and
nonquota status if marriage occurred before March 19, 1952.
76. Immigration and Nationality Act of June 27, 1952 (INA) (66
Statutes-at-Large 163)
Also known as the McCarren-Walter Act Brought into one comprehensive
statute the multiple laws which, before its enactment, governed
immigration and naturalization in the United States.
82. Refugee-Escapee Act of September 11, 1957 (71 Statutes-at-Large
639)
=====================================================
In my search I came across a lot of materials that didn’t relate to
your questions directly, but I thought they would give you a deeper
understanding of the history and politics that swirled around these
children. In addition, I’ve also included some resources that show the
personal, emotional, cultural and social aspects of these children’s
lives and circumstances.
http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/African.htm
Holocaust: Non-Jewish Victims
Mandatory Sterilization for Black Youth
Once a child was decided to be of black descent, the child was taken
immediately to a hospital and sterilized. About 400 children were
medically sterilized -- many times without their parents' knowledge.
Destined to Witness : Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany
By Hans J. Massaquoi
Hans Massaquoi, of mixed African-German parentage, came of age in Nazi
Germany.
The African-German Experience
by Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay
A collection of essays that take an in-depth look at the roots of the
African-German presence in today's Germany, with vivid descriptions of
personal accounts and rich information about Germany's colonial
history and about being black in Germany through the pre- and
post-World War II era.
CAROL AISHA BLACKSHIRE-BELAY is professor and chair of the Department
of Africana Studies at Indiana State University.
http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/bibliography/blacks/right.htm
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Individuals of African descent living in Germany were socially and
economically ostracized. They could not attend university; they lost
their jobs; they sometimes lost their citizenship. Mixed race
marriages were forbidden, and doctors illegally and secretly
sterilized between 385 and 500 biracial children, most of them
offspring of French Black soldiers and German women, children
derisively referred to as the "Rhineland bastards."
http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/ats-l/1995.Nov/0043.html
ADEFRA: Organization Of Black Women In Germany
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0870237608/ref=ase_interracialvoice/103-5233600-0037450?v=glance&s=books
Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out
Edited by three women: May Opitz, an Afro-German speech therapist and
poet; Katharina Oguntoye, a feminist historian of German and Nigerian
background, and Dagmar Schultz, a white woman and publishing house
editor. Translated from the German Farbe bekennen, the book contains a
history of German imperialism in Africa and of blacks (and mixed-race
people) in Germany as well as their portrayal by white society.
http://www.aicgs.org/resources/daad/1992093.shtml
Johns Hopkins University -- American Institute for Contemporary German
Studies
http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/ww2.htm
AFRICAN AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II
http://www.iona.edu/faculty/dwilliams/130/Schomberger.html
Life After the Americans
This is a story about GI brides. It does not mention the children of
black GIs but the background information about German society after
the war should be interesting to you.
http://www.warandchildren.org/Literature.htm
The War Children of the World
http://www.warandchildren.org/Report.pdf
War and Children Identity Project, Bergen, December 2001
This is an incredible 117 page report that discusses the children of
military personnel all over the world and covers many wars in the past
100 years. See page 21 for GI’s in Germany and page 69 for a story
about the children of black GIs in Austria after World War II.
http://www.ghi-dc.org/index.html
The German Historical Institute (GHI) (click here for a picture, a
map, links to other GHIs and other institutions in German history) is
an independent research institute dedicated to the promotion of
historical research in the United States and the Federal Republic of
Germany.
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Please ask for clarification about any of this. This was a very
interesting research project. I hope that it meets your needs.
I wish you well on your project.
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SEARCH STRATEGY
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"american soldiers" "german mothers" children
german "war baby" adoption
Children Interracial german
Children Interracial +german
"black GI" children adoption
besatzungskinder
"occupation children" germany |
