Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 January 29

= January 29 =

How many ‘Rassenschänderin’ did the fascists penalize?


Are there any statistics on the so‐called ‘Aryan’ women that the German fascists tortured or killed? — (((Romanophile))) ♞ (contributions) 16:22, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Can't answer, but note the Nazis backed off on such women, and, shockingly, even returned their Jewish husbands, in the face of the Rosenstrasse protest. A spectre which baffles. Note the link in our stub of an article on the subject to . So obviously, there were limits to how far the Nazis felt they could act against such women. Eliyohub (talk) 18:59, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Seems not that many victims, actually. See Rassenschande. I find such a low figure hard to believe, can anyone find a source claiming otherwise? It seems amazing that the Nazis would be so lax over an issue so central to their ideology. There is no division given for men and women, but the figure may still be of interest. To quote our article: "According to an article in Der Spiegel, between 1936 and 1943 the Nazis accused 1,580 persons of race defilement with 429 of them being convicted." (Such a low conviction rate in a dictatorship??? Any explanations?)
 * "Punishment for race defilement for men was the death penalty and for women it was being sent to a concentration camp. When Himmler asked Hitler what the punishment of women found guilty of race defilement should be, Hitler said "having her hair shorn and being sent to a concentration camp"."
 * So interestingly, women who did such things were supposedly treated much better than men. From the records I can find, the few women convicted were mostly sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where they are estimated to have made up 0.78% of prisoners - see our article on the camp. Can anyone with more familiarity with Nazi ideology explain why such leniency for female race-defilers, compared to male ones, and the lack of aggressive prosecution of these "race traitors"? Eliyohub (talk) 19:22, 29 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Go to for a sarcastic little 1938 poem by Nancy Mitford on the subject... AnonMoos (talk) 07:05, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * To answer your question, Eliyohub, Hitler believed (for reasons that remain understandable only to himself) that women were not capable of initiating sex. For Hitler, only men were capable of initiating sex, which explains why it almost exclusively men who were convicted of being "race defilers". So if an Aryan man had sex with a Jewish woman, it was the man who punished and likewise, if a Jewish man had sex with an Aryan woman, it was the man who was punished. Having said that much, it was a common practice for the Gestapo to ask people suspected of being "race defilers" to ask point blank if they had sex with this person, and if the suspect initially denied the claim, then that person would be charged with perjury. Raul Hilberg's book The Destruction of the European Jews talks about this subject in some detail. I hope this helps.--A.S. Brown (talk) 00:31, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Did "feme sole" exist in any other nation but England?
I have often wondered: why was England to only nation in Europe, were unmarried women were not under coverture? As far as I know (and I have done research), there was not a single nation in Christian Europe, prior to the law reforms initiated during the late 19th-century, in which unmarried women were not considered to be just as much legal minors as married women - the only difference being that unmarried women were under the coverture of their closest male relative rather than a husband. In France, in Germany, in Sweden, Norway and Denmark - I do not know a single European nation were the phenomena of "feme sole" existed in the 18th-century, except for England. Why was England such an exception from this? Was England truly the only European nation were the "feme sole" existed, or was there in fact any other 18th-century European country were adult unmarried women were of legal majority prior to the reforms of the late 19th-century? Thank you--Aciram (talk) 22:42, 29 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Don't know the answer to your question as to other legal systems. The basic (though non-specific) reason why England would be different is that it went in a somewhat unique legal direction with the development of Common law... AnonMoos (talk) 02:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)


 * There was a messy situation in Germanic areas, where several legal systems coincided and even individual towns could sometimes have totally different legal systems. It seems that feme sole-like laws (or even full female emancipation) existed across much of Germany - certainly in the Electoral Palatinate, in which not only were unmarried women independent, but married ones too after 1707 - but even the most dedicated archivist of these laws, Ernst Holthöfer, says that we still don't really know what each state's position was. In general, states that held to Germanic law gave women less freedom that those that adopted Roman law Smurrayinchester 09:41, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * @Smurrayinchester: You link to the Electoral Palatinate and (masked link) to Dorothea von Velen. I find no sources on that mistress aside from wikipedia and clones. Her portrait is the portrait of an unknown Lady. Could somebody who has access to the quoted reference Langdon-Davies, John (1962). Carlos: The Bewitched, pp. 123-124 check that she really existed? --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 21:56, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Damn, you're right. Seems to be a hoax. The words "Dorothea" and "Velen" do not appear in that book, according to Google Books search. Will nominate for deletion. Smurrayinchester 08:27, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * You write "(and I have done research)". So you must have sources! Why did you create sv:Dorothea von Velen? --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 13:20, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * @Pp.paul.4, As far as I remember, I created the Swedish language version of Dorothea von Velen from another language version article and added a source from the article I copied, but I don't know anything about Velen, and if the original article is truly a hoax - not mine - then I don't mind if the article is erased. Yes, I have done research as far as I know the situation in some countries: France, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, but I don't know the situation in Poland, Portugal, Spain, the Italian states, the Netherlands and the Balkans during the 18th-century.
 * @Smurrayinchester, Thank you for your reply, it's very interesting. Do you know anything about whether any other Christian-European area other than Germany in which unmarried women were of legal majority? How was it in the Italian states, Portugal and Spain in the 18th-century?--Aciram (talk) 14:01, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * How far back do you want to look? In medieval law, women were sometimes pretty well enfranchised, but that seems to be well before the period you're asking about. (And it depends on the time period/geographical area - as Smurray said, there is a big difference between Roman law and Germanic law.) Adam Bishop (talk) 01:48, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I should have mentioned that: I refer to the 17th-century-early 19th-century, so the 18th-century would be a good choice. If there was such a difference in Roman vs German law, then what was the case in 18th-century Poland? --Aciram (talk) 14:01, 31 January 2017 (UTC)