Workshop - Gender Relationships between Occupiers and Occupied during the Allied Occupation of Germany (1945-1955)

This international workshop aims at exploring the various modalities of non-voluntary cohabitation implied by the Allied military occupation in defeated Germany after 1945. In everyday life military occupation covered a wide range of interactions from protection to violence between mostly male occupiers, considered the winners, and holders of many privileges, against the occupied of both sexes, defeated and in a situation of legal, economic, as well as moral inferiority. The relationships between occupiers and the occupied ranged from enmity to intimacy and affected gender roles in several ways. Gender relationships were thus at the very heart of ongoing explicit and implicit renegotiation of these power struggles.

Please note that a pre-registration for the workshop is necessary. Please pre-register by May 29 by e-mail to andrea.nordlander@frias.uni-freiburg.de

You can also register for the FRIAS Lunch on Thursday. The lunch costs 12 €. When registering, please specify whether you would like the meat/fish or vegetarian option.

Programme

Thursday, June 6, 2019

09:00 I Arrival of the participants at FRIAS (seminar room)

09:15 I Opening of the workshop

Panel 1: Strategic, National, and Societal Dimensions of Sexual Violence in War Times

Chair: Sylvia Paletschek (Freiburg)

09:30 I Claire Miot (Paris): Before the Occupation. Gender Relationships between Soldiers and Women during the Invasion of Southern Germany by the French Army (April-July 1945)

10:10 I Anne-Laure Briatte (Freiburg/Paris): Reasserting Gender Roles. The Reports of the Catholic Priests on Sexual Violence and Intimate Encounters in the French Zone of Occupation

Discussion of the panel

11:00 I Coffee break in the lounge

Panel 2: Responses to Fraternizations between Allied Occupiers and German Women

Chair: Anne-Laure Briatte (Freiburg/Paris)

11:30 I Ann-Kristin Glöckner (Halle-Wittenberg): “[D]iese Art der ‚Verbrüderung‘ geht einem denn doch etwas gegen den Strich!“ – Intimate Relationships between French and Germans in Southwestern Germany under Occupation, 1945-55

12:10 I Camilo Erlichman (Maastricht): A Question of Honour? Violence against Women in the British Zone of Germany

13:00 I Lunch in the lounge

Chair: Fabrice Virgili (Paris)

14:00 I Nadja Klopprogge (Berlin/Basel): Race, Sex and the Liminality of the Aftermath: African American Occupation Troops in Postwar Germany

14:40 I Lena Rudeck (Berlin): Controlled Fraternization in Western Allied Soldiers’ Clubs? The System of American Social Passes, 1945-1948

Discussion of the panel

15:30 I Teatime

Panel 3: Shifting Gender Roles in New Power Relationships

Chair: Valérie Dubslaff (Rennes)

16:00 I Stefanie Siess (Heidelberg/Paris): Social Representations in Ego-Documents from the French Zone of Occupation (1945-1955)

16:40 I Arvid Schors (Freiburg): Young Men Returning Home to an Alien Country. German-Speaking Emigrants as American and British Soldiers of Occupation in Germany and Austria

17:20 I Bettina Blum (Paderborn): „Mothers fight for their home“. Gendered Approaches to the Requisitioning of Houses in Westphalia

Discussion of the panel

19:30 I Conference dinner

Friday, June 7, 2019

Panel 4: Cross-Border Family Constellations and National Issues around the ‘Children of the the Occupation’

Chair: Nadja Klopprogge (Berlin/Basel)

09:00 I Christopher Knowles (London): Marriage with ‘ex-enemy Aliens’: Why did British Servicemen marry German women after the End of the Second World War?

09:40 I Lukas Schretter (Graz): From Taboo to Recognition. Children Fathered by British Soldiers in Austria after World War II

10:30 I Coffee break in the lounge

Chair: Camilo Erlichman (Maastricht)

11:00 I Yves Denéchère (Angers): The Attitude of the French State towards Children born to French Soldiers and Local Women in Germany and Indochina (1945-1954). A comparative Approach

11:40 I Fabrice Virgili (Paris): Recover Allied Children in Germany (1945-1949)

Discussion of the panel

Final discussion of the workshop

Organiser: Dr. Anne-Laure Briatte (FRIAS I Sorbonne University)