Re-education by Jurisdiction: On Enforcing a Christian-Occidental Understand-ing of Marriage in Western Germany After 1945

Abstract

After 1945 the re-opened Family Courts of the German West Zones took a christian-occidental idea of marriage as a basis, by reinterpretating the Nazi-influenced, still valid Marriage Act 1938. This way they contributed to re-education after 12 years of Nazism. Which were the ideological Fundaments of re-education? The struggle for an ideological realignment begun in post-war Germany immediately after the war and was inseparably entwined with the struggle for the sovereignty of authoritative definition over the terms “marriage” and “family”. Until 1945 "morality" in the sense the German Marriage Act simply meant “fertility”. After 1945 “morality” simply meant that in principle marriages were indissoluble. If a woman had married, she could be sure after a very short time to have acquired a right to lifelong care through lifelong marriage. This article shows the way from “morality” to “morality”.