Conferences

From time immemorial ignorance of maternity and particularly of paternity has been commonplace in European societies. Ancestry was always associated with ‘blood’. In the first half of the 20th century the introduction of the classification of blood groups was seen as a promising tool of evidence in paternity cases. The political reasons were equivocal. In Denmark e.g. the eminent social democrat politician and later Minister of Justice, K.K. Steincke, got seven new laws passed in 1937 concerning illegitimate children in order to diminish their mortality, a mortality which allegedly was the double of the mortality among legitimate children. On the one hand the manoeuvre succeeded, because the maintenance payments secured a certain living standard for the children, while it failed on the other hand, because the identities of the children were neglected later on. In this presentation different sources of knowledge on paternity and maternity in the Danish case will be presented and discussed: 1. Traces of concealment. 2. Gossip 3. Traces, marks and clues 4. Testimonies 5. Evidence in the parish register 6. Evidence in Statstidende 7. Evidence in the police archives 8. Interrogations by Mødrehjælpen 9. Paternity-cases in the Vergleich Kommission 10. Notifications in Standesamt I in Berlin or at local courts in Germany 11. General negotiations between Danish and German authorities 12. Evidence by dna-fingerprinting.