Bitte nehmen Sie mit uns Kontakt auf:
What we need your help for:
Your story is important! Help us to make the history of the removal of custody rights from mothers in lesbian relationships in Berlin visible and to contribute to the education and documentation of the history of lesbian discrimination.
To do this, we are looking for you, mothers and children, who would like to speak publicly about their experiences in divided and reunified Berlin. Your reports should help to better understand and process historical discrimination and its possible aftereffects up to the present day.
Do you have any information on the subject of the removal of custody rights in Berlin or are/were you affected yourself?
Then please contact the project manager and scientific officer for society, participation and anti-discrimination at the BMH personally and confidentially.
We are happy about any interest and will treat your contact discreetly and confidentially.
Thank you for your support.
Contact person:
Research project for the State of Berlin – What it’s about:
Our research project explores the files and literature that shed light on the injustice suffered by lesbian mothers through the removal of custody in divorce proceedings. Dr. Kirsten Plötz and Maria Bühner are conducting the research project on behalf of the Magnus Hirschfeld Federal Foundation.
The research focuses on cases in both West and East Berlin between May 1945 and the end of 1999. The threat of losing custody of lesbian mothers in West Germany until the end of the 1990s was one of the most serious forms of discrimination against lesbian love. Fear was therefore widespread among the affected mothers, which could become an insurmountable obstacle to living as lesbians. Whether custody was also removed in the GDR due to lesbianism needs to be investigated, as does the situation in East Berlin between 1990 and 1999.
We are already looking for witnesses who would like to share their stories of the loss of custody of lesbian mothers. You can find our call for submissions above.
In addition to the Plötz/Bühner research project, we are also able to conduct two biographical video interviews in our oral history project “Archive of Other Memories.” We will make these two interviews with mothers living in lesbian relationships available to researchers and interested parties, according to the interviewees’ preferences.
As the project sponsor, it is of central importance to us that all information entrusted to us is treated with the same level of confidentiality. The contemporary witnesses themselves decide how their tips, information, or life stories will be incorporated into the various parts of the project. After an initial consultation, they will be advised by our contact person and academic advisor, Charlotte von Schuckmann.
The overall project aims to highlight the state injustices suffered by lesbian mothers. In this way, we are jointly contributing to the clarification and documentation of the history of lesbian discrimination.
The project is made possible through funding from the Berlin State Office for Equal Treatment – Against Discrimination (LADS) as part of the initiative “Berlin stands up for self-determination and acceptance of gender and sexual diversity” (IGSV).
You might also be interested in…
Video: 3 questions for Dr. Kirsten Plötz
In this approximately 16-minute video, you will not only get to know the historian Dr. Kirsten Plötz, but also hear exciting facts from her about the topic of custody removal for mothers in lesbian relationships.
In our short online video, Dr. Plötz answers very clearly,
- what it meant for the mothers concerned that they were deprived of custody or were threatened with it,
- on which legal foundations the removal of custody was based and how these have changed in the course of recent history, and
- when and why this practice of depriving children of their custody ended in Germany.
If the video is not displayed due to your browser settings, you can access the video directly on YouTube using the following link: https://youtu.be/j9Uw9ImZZ9s.
Research project on the removal of custody for mothers in lesbian relationships in Rhineland-Palatinate (Dr. Kirsten Plötz, 2021)
In Rhineland-Palatinate, historian Dr. Kirsten Plötz conducted the study “…in constant fear…” on the removal of custody for mothers in lesbian relationships and published her research results in 2021.
The state of Rhineland-Palatinate commissioned the Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin together with the Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld to carry out the study, which was then carried out by Dr. Kirsten Plötz.
Interview project “Archive of other memories”
Since 2013, the Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld has collected more than 100 queer life stories in the form of video interviews. The interviews are available for research and education. The prerequisite for this is, of course, that the interviewees themselves have given their consent.
