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| Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter | |
|---|---|
| Name | Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter |
| Awarded by | Nazi Germany |
| Type | Civil decoration |
| Eligibility | Mothers of multiple children of German blood |
| Status | Discontinued |
| Established | 16 December 1938 |
| First awarded | 1939 |
| Last awarded | 1945 |
Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter The Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter was a state decoration instituted in 1938 to recognize mothers who had borne and raised multiple children deemed of German descent. It functioned as a pronatalist honor within Nazi social policy linked to population, racial, and welfare objectives, and intersected with contemporary institutions, personalities, and laws across the Third Reich.
The medal emerged under the aegis of Adolf Hitler and the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, paralleling initiatives associated with Werner von Blomberg, Heinrich Himmler, and Hermann Göring that sought demographic change through reproductive incentives. It was announced alongside legislation and programs such as the Reich Ministry of the Interior, the Reich Mother’s Service (Reichsmütterdienst), and organizations like the NS-Frauenschaft, the German Labour Front, and the Winterhilfswerk. Influences included earlier European pronatalist movements exemplified by policies in France under the Third Republic and natalist efforts in Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini and in interwar Poland. The award complemented measures like the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour and intersected with Nazi racial theories promoted by figures such as Alfred Rosenberg and institutions including the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and Ahnenerbe. It was part of a broader social architecture involving charities, schools, Jugendbewegung groups, and welfare offices influenced by Julius Streicher’s propaganda apparatus and the Reichskulturkammer.
Eligibility criteria were administratively defined by the Reich’s civil offices and implemented by municipal authorities, the NSDAP apparatus, the League of German Girls, and local Frauenamt branches. Recipients were mothers considered of German descent, often evaluated with reference to population registers, civil status offices, and SS racial screening practices associated with Rudolf Höss and regional Gestapo officials. The decoration had three classes—bronze, silver, and gold—corresponding to the number of children, with ties to incentives promoted by ministries such as the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels and social policy directives shaped by Franz Seldte and Walther Darré. Comparable honors and certificates from other states and movements included awards observed in the Soviet Union under the Order of Maternal Glory, alongside contemporaneous medals in the United Kingdom and the United States promoting family policy during the interwar and wartime periods.
The physical design was produced by state-approved medallists and executed by firms and institutions linked to the Reichskunstwart and German foundries, with input from designers associated with the Deutsches Ahnenerbe aesthetic. The insignia incorporated imagery resonant with Third Reich symbolism adopted by municipal heraldry and exhibited in exhibitions organized by the Reichskulturkammer and the Germanic SS cultural offices. Materials and manufacture involved German industries that also supplied the Wehrmacht, including foundries from the Ruhr, factories connected to IG Farben and Krupp, and smaller artisan workshops in Munich and Berlin that had ties to award production for the Reich Chancellery and the Prussian State Mint. Parallel visual tropes were seen in propaganda posters distributed by the Ministry of Propaganda and displayed at exhibitions in cities such as Nuremberg, Munich, and Berlin.
Ceremonies were staged by local Nazi Party officials, mayors, Kreisleitungen, and Gauleiter offices, often with participation from figures like Joseph Goebbels, Baldur von Schirach, and regional party leaders who represented the Reich Interior and social agencies. Presentation events were publicized through the Völkischer Beobachter and Leni Riefenstahl’s film crews were sometimes present at major rallies that included awards as part of larger mass meetings akin to the Nuremberg rallies. Documentation and registries were maintained by civil registry offices, the Reich Labour Service in some localities, and women’s organizations such as the Bund Deutscher Mädel, with records later examined by Allied occupation authorities, the International Military Tribunal, and denazification agencies in the American, British, French, and Soviet zones.
Reception varied: contemporaries like conservative politicians, clergy including members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, and industrialists weighed in differently, while international observers from the League of Nations, delegations from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union noted the award as emblematic of Nazi social engineering. After 1945, Allied military governments, historians such as Ian Kershaw and Richard J. Evans, and institutions including the Bundesarchiv and various Holocaust memorials assessed the decoration’s role within racial policy and demographic strategy. Survivors’ accounts, scholarly works produced by historians at universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and the Free University of Berlin, and exhibitions at museums including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem have contextualized the medal alongside other civil awards and discussed its entanglement with coercive policies overseen by the SS, Gestapo, and ministries of the Reich. The decoration remains a subject in studies of gender policy, natalism, and state symbolism involving researchers like Gisela Bock, Claudia Koonz, and Robert Gellately, and it is catalogued in collections at institutions such as the Deutsches Historisches Museum, the Imperial War Museum, and regional archives across Europe.
Category:Orders, decorations, and medals of Nazi Germany