Sexual Treason in Germany during the First World War by Lisa M. Todd

Author:Lisa M. Todd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

The Bishop of Wurzburg instructed his clergymen to ‘admonish and instruct’ their parishioners that the issue was an important spiritual question, and one that had grave consequences for the morality and religion of the German nation. ‘The entire Christian nation’, he wrote, ‘must know that it is crucial for us, both as individuals and as a group, to continue to warn against “free” relations between the sexes.’ 36 This reference to “free relations’ was a thinly veiled attack on sexual reformers such as Helene Stöcker: no doubt it resonated well with the Bishop’s parishioners and those who read his comments in the local newspaper.

Despite such freely offered advocacy and support from German citizens across the Reich, the military authorities decided that the most effective way to curb illicit sexual relationships was to make them illegal. From a legal perspective, this was a relatively straightforward process. With arguments that pointed out the dangers of espionage, of diseases such as lice, typhus and cholera, and of escaped prisoners, military authorities in many districts began introducing regulations based on the Prussian Siege Law of 1851 which curtailed contact between civilians and prisoners. 37 The authorities placed notices in local newspapers to remind Germans that unnecessary contact between civilians and prisoners could be punishable by fines or imprisonment. Thus, in February 1915, the Deputy General Commander of the First Bavarian Army Corps warned that the following activities could be punishable by up to one year’s imprisonment: meeting a prisoner, helping to set up meetings between unauthorized civilians and prisoners, giving gifts of any kind to the prisoners or helping prisoners escape from either their place of work or the prison camp. 38 Likewise, the Chief Army Commander in the Mark Brandenburg reminded the readers of the Berliner Tageblatt in August 1915 that persons could be punished under Sections 120, 121 and 257 of the Reich Criminal Code for providing working prisoners of war with foodstuffs, money, clothing or items that ‘could help facilitate an escape’. 39

The laws were evidently broad enough to allow arrest of hundreds of women suspected of cavorting with prisoners. However, there were still cases of ‘immoral’ women escaping jail time. For instance, the Konitzer Zeitung reported the following case: a woman on her way home from errands encountered a French prisoner of war working on the street. The two fell into conversation about how German prisoners were treated so poorly in France while French prisoners were treated so well in Germany (a popular wartime topic). Because of this brief conversation, the woman was arrested and brought before a Bavarian provincial court judge. The judge found her not guilty because he did not feel that a short exchange of words contravened the ban against civilian relations with foreign prisoners. To the judge, only an ‘excessively friendly or suggestive’ conversation or sexual relations were punishable by law. 40 However, Bavarian wartime law only stipulated that civilians should not have ‘unauthorized contact’ with the prisoners. Such a vague term left ample room for local law enforcers to interpret the law as they saw fit.

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