Midwives in the "Biopolitical Laboratory" of the "Reich District Wartheland" - Obstetrics between Privacy and Government Intervention

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Cornelia Rauh
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2014 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 254425648

During the duration of the project from June 1, 2014, to November 30, 2016, German and Polish midwives will be taken into account as actors in each of their specific courses of action, motivations for action, and inherent logic. Midwives worked as experts in the female-dominated and simultaneously highly politically charged sphere of activity of birth and reproduction in the Reichsgau Wartheland. The superordinate germanization and biopolitical goal of creating an efficient extended ethnic community and at the same time breaking the biological power of the Polish population defined obstetrics and the work of midwives. German and Polish midwives worked at the interface between the domestic, private sphere and governmental access. On the one hand, they had an interdependent function as attendants for women in the periods of biological upheaval of pregnancy, birth, and early parenthood, and on the other, invested with government orders, German midwives with instruments of power as well, were partially responsible for the implementation of National Socialist biopolicy. Depending on ones ethnic membership and race-related classification in accordance with the National Socialist race and biopolicy, pregnancy, birth, and early parenthood were subject to completely different conditions. The prioritization of germanization and race policy as well as the racist social hierarchy in the Warthegau provided midwives in the German Reich with a new position of authority and power. In their area of competence, they independently promoted the relevant implementation of the policy. However, it was primarily Polish midwives who assumed the major share of obstetrical care, including among the German population, and they frequently had an unbroken relationship of trust with their ethnic German clientele. Trust between a midwife and her clientele was capable of creating an enablement space in which, at least at times, the needs and ideas of the respective actors were given priority, where even abortions were possible and bans on interaction as well as germanization and biopolitical goals shifted into the background. In the continuance of the funding being applied for here, focus will be placed on Polish-Jewish midwives as actors, their opportunities for action, and their interaction with their clientele as well as their non-Jewish environment. Polish-Jewish midwives were excluded from assisting at the birth of children by non-Jewish women. The opportunities for interaction with the non-Jewish environment were constricted with the increasing social exclusion and ghettoization of the Jewish population. Focusing on Polish-Jewish midwives enables contributing to what Saul Friedländer calls an integrated historiography of the Holocaust for the area of birth and reproduction and bringing together the highly divergent and increasingly antagonistic interactions, experiences, and perspectives of German, Polish, and Jewish midwives in the Warthegau region.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Professorin Dr. Elizabeth Harvey; Professor Dr. Johannes Hürter