The Bureaucracy of Love in Underground Europe
On a "marriage of convenience" among anti-Nazi exiles
Marriage is on my mind at the moment. The reason? I just got married.
(we had a wonderful day, it all went perfectly, thank you)
I am obliged - cursed, even - to consider all major life events against a historical backdrop.
So, as I hurtled towards my own wedding, I was thinking about the place of marriage within my own research. In particular, I thought about how marriage - this institution normally seen as staid - could be reimagined into something revolutionary, even life-saving.
This was one thread of a talk I gave at the conference Love & War, 1914-2024. I spoke about a ‘marriage of convenience’ that took place in Paris in the summer of 1939.
In August of that year, Emmy Leonhard, a German anti-Nazi woman living in exile in France, married a Dutch man named Daniel de Jager. The pair, it seems, barely knew one another. After the ceremony, they both said goodbye and Emmy got on the bus home.
The story of this marriage was not one of romantic love but a tale of citizenship and comradeship. Rightly fearing an impending war, Emmy realised that, as a German national residing in France, she was liable to be interned as an ‘enemy alien’ following a German invasion.
An even darker fate awaited her if German soldiers came upon her. As an anti-Nazi socialist and the romantic partner of a leading resistance organiser, Emmy’s nationality actively endangered her rather than conferring any protections of citizenship.
In early 20th century Europe, a wife took her husband’s citizenship upon marriage and lost her own. Thus, by marrying Daniel de Jager, Emmy became a Dutch national.
In this particular moment of peril, a patriarchal norm counterintuitively gave Emmy Leonhard greater freedom of movement and lifted the possibility of internment.
After I gave this talk, my friend and colleague Dónal Hassett pointed out that ‘marriage of convenience’ was a poor term for such a relationship. These partnerships were anything but convenient.
Although there was usually no element of romance, these relationships were not purely utilitarian. Often, they were based on another form of love: passionate commitment to a cause embodied in a favour performed for another person.
This is something I plan to keep in mind as I set out on a new project involving another set of anti-fascist radicals who often married one another for reasons of sanctuary rather than romance.
These were certainly loving marriages, albeit marriages bonded together by a radically different kind of love than the kind you may initially expect.