Question about adoption in early nineteenth-century Germany
Hi all - I'm wondering if anyone here knows much about conventions regarding adoption in early nineteenth-century Germany. When adoption occurred, was it typically informal? Would the names of parents on a church baptismal record typically be those of the birth parents? Did churches have an official way of recording adoptions? And was adoption a common occurrence when a child was born out of wedlock? Might an individual have used both his/her adopted and birth surnames throughout their lives? I have two individuals I'm researching from early nineteenth-century Germany who were both born out of wedlock, and based on the names and information I can find, I suspect they were both adopted, but I'm trying to figure out how to confirm this. Any help or tips would be much appreciated!
Jill
Kommentare
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Hello Jill,
I am certainly no expert on this question and it is difficult to comment on your specific case without knowledge about the details. Here are just some general thoughts:
Adoption in early nineteenth century and before was probably quite rare. It was not determined by the best interests of the child, but usually done for reasons of inheritance, e.g. of a farm, in the case of childless marriages (also serving as a retirement provision for the adopting parents). It was a legal act with which the church had little or nothing to do. The Prussian General Land Law of 1794 decreed that an adopter should be older than 50 years and have no children of his own. The adopted "children" were therefore usually beyond child age.
Illegitimate children were quite common in all times, but the "release for adoption" as a toddler seems to be a modern development that came about in the industrialized urban society. Children born out of wedlock usually had their mother's surname at birth. If the mother later married (the biological father or another man) the child may also take on the new family name, with or without adoption. The biological father could also recognize his paternity (already at childbirth or later); such notes can be found now and then in church books.
The parallel use of birth and adopted names seems to me rather strange, at least in Germany.
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Thank you so much for these thoughts... this is great information. In one of the cases I'm researching, an individual was born out of wedlock in Southern Germany in the 1830s, and both parents' names were clearly recorded on the baptismal record. But the individual's later marriage record lists different names for her parents than the baptismal record. And her death record from the United States in the early twentieth century lists her parents with a combination of names that appear on both her baptismal record and her marriage record, which made me wonder if she was adopted (perhaps not legally, but at least raised by another family, perhaps a relative). I'll have to keep researching to put the pieces together. I appreciate your thoughts!
Jill
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