I recently heard from a family member, that it was possible in the case of death whilst serving in the German military during the Second World War, for the partner to marry them posthumously in order to get a military pension.
Does anyone have any more information on this please? How could it be monitored? Surely it would have been easy to fake. Would this be revoked upon entering a second marriage? Many thanks for your answers!
Yes, the process was nicknamed Leichentrauung.
In november 1939, §§ 13 ff. der Dritten Verordnung zur Ausführung des Personenstandsgesetzes (Personenstandsverordnung der Wehrmacht), introduced the concept of Ferntrauung (distant marriage), where the groom and bride could marry basically via postal ways. Instead of both going to the Standesamt (civil office), the groom had to lay down his commitment to the bride in front of the batallion commander. The Wehrmacht then sent the papers to the civil office of the bride, where she signed the paper in front of the civil servant and two marriage witnesses and was now officially considered married. The ceremony was nicknamed Stahlhelmhochzeit (steel helmet marriage) because they put a Stahlhelm where the groom would stand. Check this photo where the bride signs the certificate besides a M35 in Berlin in 1940. This pic shows a Leutnant of the Wehrmacht's Luftwaffe getting married in the Normandy in 1944.
The law allowed for up to 9 month for the papers to be sent from the Wehrmacht unit to the civil office of the bride and was widened to members of the Wehrmacht, Waffen SS and later also the Reichsbahn.
As you can imagine, the 9 month timeframe was necessary to get the papers from the front to the home especially in later years of the war. And there can also happen a lot to the groom. The law considered the marriage to be legal once the bride signed the papers, even if the groom died at the front 1 minute after signing his papers. However, the marriage was backdated to the day the groom signed his papers - and in the worst case died. So once the marriage was official, the bride became a widow, with all rights to inheritances and widowers pensions. She would already get 9 month of it on her marriage day.
My grandparents did a Ferntrauung, and it took them over a year and two tries to get the papers from Africa to our civil office in central Germany.
However, a problem arose in the case that the groom was not able to lay down his will to marry the bride. To prevent those cases, Hitler issued a secret decree through the OKW to the ministry of interior to allow marriages, where the groom is already deceased and there can be reasonably argued that the groom intended to marry the bride. The secret decree and the implementing regulation for the civil offices where top secret, but no later than 1944 pretty much known among the population and nicknamed Leichentrauung (corpse wedding).
The bride/widow-to-be had to proof that she was engaged to the deceased groom. This could be done with witnesses of the (alleged) engagement or a pregnancy. The bride directly became a legal widow, with all inheritances and pension entitlements. A child was not to be considered to be born out of wedlock.
There were circa 25000 Leichentrauungen until the British forces banned the practice in 1946.
The SS SD concluded in 1944 that the secret process was widely known and accepted, but often opposed by the parents of the deceased groom. They often feared that a child was illegitimate and the bride was only interested in the inheritance part and pensions. Officials were also concerned, that a young widow with a good pension would not remarry and birth more children. To address this problem, a Leichentrauung was limited to the case were a child/pregnancy was involved and the inheritance was limited to the child, the bride/widow was excluded from the inheritance.
In 1943, a similar concept, the corpse divorce was created. If a husband died in the field and the widow showed any behaviour that would have led to a divorce if the husband wasn't dead, the prosecutor could open a divorce process on behalf of the deceased husband. A divorced widow lost all pensions and inheritances.
The FRG legitimised corpse weddings that happened until 31.03.1946 on 29. März 1951.
France introduced a posthumous marriage during WW1, but I am not an expert on their laws and processes.
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