Everyday life and persecution of "half-Jewish" women and men in Vienna, 1938-1945

This project focuses on the living conditions of women and men of half-Jewish descent during the time of the Nazi regime in Vienna. Their mere existence and how to categorize them challenged National Socialist ideology. In conjunction with the so-called Final Solution, this unsolved problem played an important role in the discussions during the Wannsee conference and its follow-up meetings in January, March and October of 1942. With the Nuremberg Laws from September 15, 1935 the National Socialists institutionalized their antisemitic ideology on a juridical basis. The First Supplementary Decree of the Nuremberg Laws (November 14, 1935) defined individuals with one Jewish and one Aryan parent either as so-called Mischlinge of the first degree or as Geltungsjuden, depending on their denomination. Half-Jews baptized in a Christian religion or without denomination were classified as Mischlinge. They were considered neither Aryan nor Jewish and literally personified the status of being in-between. Individuals with one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent who were registered with the Jewish community at the time of the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws were considered Geltungsjuden and consequently subjected to the same discriminatory regulations as the rest of the Jewish population. The fact that the regime ultimately had to revert to religion in order to to codify their racial theory illustrates the absurdities of National Socialist ideology. Even though there was a sizeable number of half-Jews living in Vienna (highest number second to Berlin within the entire German Reich), little research has been conducted on this subject for the Austrian context. This project intends to help close this research gap. This study follows Saul Friedländer and his concept of an integrated history, where the persecuted are taken seriously as individuals and where their perspective is taken into account as much as the actions of the perpetrators This habilitation project will explore the experiences of half-Jewish women and men during the years of Nazi persecution in Vienna. Besides questions regarding identities of people who were considered in between, this project will investigate aspects of inclusion and exclusion, group solidarity and gender. Although the time period of this project spans from the time of the Anschluss to the end of the Nazi regime in Austria, the post-war context will also be taken into account, since it will give important insight into concepts of identity and the coping strategies of half-Jews as well as their experiences of discrimination and persecution.

Early Holocaust research treated the persecution of intermarriages and their "half-Jewish" descendants as marginal, since they were considered "privileged" to whom "nothing had happened." Only in the late 1980s did their fate gain increased attention. The situation of intermarried families in Austria has long remained a research desideratum. This research, which has been made possible by this funding program, therefore sheds light on a largely unexplored subject. In the context of National Socialist race ideology, marriages between Jews and Gentiles as well as the presence of their "half-Jewish" descendants represented a threat to the integrity of the Nazi regime. In conjunction with the so-called Final Solution, this "unsolved problem" played an important role at the Wannsee conference, where questions about Mischehen and Mischlinge were heatedly debated. For hardliners, no "solution" could be "final" without "solving the Mischling problem." Two follow-up conferences were organized that were dedicated primarily to this issue. Internal differences within the Nazi party and concerns that Aryan family members would cause public unrest ultimately spared this group from the full force of radical measures applied to the general Jewish population, even if plans for their ultimate inclusion in the Final Solution were never abandoned. This project with its microhistorical setting positions itself within international theoretical debates of Holocaust studies. Microhistory, which has gained increasing importance in Holocaust research, enables a change of scale in writing Holocaust history, revealing complexities and contradictions that would otherwise be lost in the grand explanatory models of earlier historiographies. The project follows Saul Friedländer's concept of an integrated history of the Holocaust. In addition to documents produced by the Nazi apparatus of persecution, it includes holdings of the Jewish community, contemporary press, personal documents, letters, autobiographies and survivor testimonies. The latter are particularly valuable sources for exploring coping strategies and aspects of everyday life. They also give insight into survival strategies and reveal acts of resistance and self-assertion that were not reflected in the sources created by Nazi institutions. Thereby, victims cease to appear as an anonymous collective and their agency and strategies of survival become evident. Considering the massive scale of the Nazi genocidal program, the fact that the Holocaust was also an intimate history shaping the relationships between individuals easily gets lost from sight. Research on intermarried families, who by definition navigated between Jewish and non-Jewish worlds, thereby also enhances our understanding of the intricacies of interpersonal relations during the Holocaust. While this project in the beginning mainly focused on "half-Jewish" descendants of intermarriages, the importance of the entire family system and the mutual dependencies in the struggle for survival became evident in the course of the project. This research therefore also includes "mixed marriages" in its analysis.