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Barbara Stelzl-Marx and Silke Satjukow, eds., Besatzungskinder: Die Nachkommen alliierter Soldaten in Österreich und Deutschland (Occupation children: The descendants of Allied soldiers in Austria and Germany), Vienna: Böhlau, 2015, 538 pp., €35 (hardback), ISBN 978-3-20579-657-2.
This collection of essays is the outcome of a 2012 Vienna conference on Besatzungskinder (Occupation children) in Austria and Germany, organized by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on Consequences of War in Graz and the Institute for History at the University of Magdeburg. Estimates indicate that in the ten years following the end of World War II, four hundred thousand children were born to Allied soldiers and local mothers in Germany. In Austria, about thirty thousand children fathered by Allied soldiers were born out of wedlock (11). Despite this large number, for decades Besatzungskinder remained understudied and received little support from policy makers. Only in recent years have researchers in various disciplines built professional networks to deal with the subject. The Vienna conference was the first scholarly event on the subject. The book also provides ample room for Besatzungskinder themselves to express their personal experiences.
The collection has six parts and contains twenty-nine essays. After the introduction (part 1), the volume deals with Besatzungskinder divided by the Allied powers in Austria and Germany: Soviet Besatzungskinder (part 2), American and British Besat- zungskinder (part 3), and French Besatzungskinder (part 4). The autobiographical texts of twelve Besatzungskinder and one child of a Besatzungskind (part 5) bear witness to the relevance and topicality of the subject. The appendix (part 6) includes maps of the occupation zones, a list of abbreviations, a bibliography, an archive directory, a register of places and names, and short biographies of the authors. Considering its scope, the volume can be regarded as the standard reference work on the topic.
In their introduction, Barbara Stelzl-Marx and Silke Satjukow-both renowned researchers on Besatzungskinder and editors of the volume-give an overview of the current state of research (11-14). Sabine Lee and Ingvill C. Mochmann link the topic of Besatzungskinder to the research field of children born of war, which not only refers to children born during the postwar period in Europe but also includes children fathered by foreign soldiers and born to local mothers in a variety of conflict and postconflict...