President's Showcase
Sarah Brophy she/her/hers
Supervising Professor: Dr. Katherine Mooney, Dr. Nathan Stoltzfus
Sarah Brophy is a senior and Service Scholar majoring in History and Political Science. As an undergraduate at FSU, Sarah has interned with the National Legal and Defender’s Association, the Florida Legislature, and the International Rescue Committee. Most recently, she served as an English language tutor for the German refugee community in Halle, where she conducted research for her thesis. After graduating, Sarah hopes to pursue a PhD in history, combining her two passions - refugee resettlement work and German history - to explore the evolution of refugeehood in Germany.
Abstract
The 1935 Nuremberg Laws seemingly showed the National Socialists’ hardline stance against interfaith marriages. In practice, there was no such clear-cut stance; intermarriage was a constant pain for the Nazi regime from the first regional policies in 1933 to the final drafting of Mischlinge and Mischehen into labor forces. These policies were followed to varying degrees depending on popular sentiment, Nazi officials, and public backlash. Initial regulations included prosecuting Aryan and Jewish young adults for fraternizing and extramarital relationships between Aryans and Jews. It wasn’t until 1935 that a national law was put in place banning intermarriage and defining who was a Jew; still, there was no substantial revisit of intermarriage policy until 1938. In December of 1938, Hitler issued a secret decree creating a new status - a “privileged” marriage divided the community, further isolating and ostracizing “nonprivileged” unions. Those in privileged marriages could remain in their homes, dodged deportation, and were shielded from the horrors reigning down on Europe’s Jewish population. The designation of privilege was only extended to Aryan husbands and their Jewish wives - with children raised outside the Jewish faith or without children - and Aryan wives with Jewish husbands raising their children outside of the Jewish community. The goal of this distinction was clear: to isolate intermarried couples and their children further from the Aryan population. Within a complicated web of pseudo-scientific race research, the entanglement of intermarried people in German society, and Mischlinge children who were loyal to their parents before the regime.
Presentation Materials