Lebensborn – an investigation into racist birth politics
Rotterdam-based photographer Angeniet Berkers spoke about her photobook LEBENSBORN at FOTODOK’s BOOKTALKS on 10 October 2024. She examined the programme used by Nazi Germany to pursue an active population policy. ‘Lebensborn’ or ‘source of life’ was a programme to revive dramatically declining birth rates after World War I. Germans were encouraged in every way possible to have more children. At the same time, the Nazis were concerned with improving ‘the quality of the Aryan race’. SS officers were more or less obliged to conceive as many children as possible, both within and outside marriage.
The SS set up Lebensborn homes in Germany and occupied Europe. There, women gave birth to children who would meet racial criteria. In the occupied countries, women were mainly taken in to give birth to children born from relationships with German soldiers stationed there. It was kept hidden from the general public. Children who met the ‘Aryan’ criteria were also abducted. Some of these children ended up in Lebensborn children’s homes where they were ‘Germanised’. Childless parents in Nazi Germany could appeal to Lebensborn for a foster or adoptive child.
After the German defeat, the mothers were left stigmatised. Their children experienced rejection and would be left with questions about origin and identity for the rest of their lives. Drawing on years of research, travels across Europe and interviews with Lebensborn children, Angeniet has created an impressive documentary in book form. Her photobook has been nominated for the 2024 Paris Photo-Aperture First PhotoBook Award. Following the BOOKTALKS, Peter Romijn interviewed her.
How did you get into this subject?
I was educated as a mental health professional and have also worked as a counsellor. I once spoke to a former colleague at Centre 45 – the centre for treating psychotraumas of war victims – about children of collaborators. For a long time, there was no treatment option for this group because it was too sensitive for war victims. Fortunately, that has changed. But it shocked me, it is of course about intergenerational trauma. I decided to develop a project about it. Then I came across Lebensborn and that is what I ended up focusing on.
In the meantime, you made a switch to photography?
Yes, I always had a drive towards art school and at some point I decided I wanted to develop in that direction. I then took a course at the SKVR in Rotterdam, to get to know and use my camera properly. Then I was admitted to the KABK, did the programme part-time and found my destination that way.
For whom did you create this book mainly?
First and foremost for the people it concerns. In fact, that is paramount in all my work. The people sharing these experiences have to feel good about the story, it has to be right. After all, these are very radical experiences, often sensationalised in the media: ‘SS!’, ‘Moffenmeiden!’. I want to stay far from that and a photobook is an ideal medium for that.
You’ve had ample publicity and your book has been widely praised. Do you think you managed to convey just the nuance?
Yes, it succeeded, but I also interfered quite a bit. There had to be no screaming headlines above the stories in the media, it was important to avoid certain words: ‘breeding factories’ and the like. With this project, I was very much like: this is something few people know about, this has to change, because for these children it has become so defining for their lives. This has actually become a kind of mission.
In your book, you don’t really comment, from the looks of it, the images and stories tell themselves. I also see a lot of commitment in your interviews, the people come across very well and we see a very broad spectrum of experiences.
I think it is important not to direct, readers are given space to think and judge for themselves. Someone said about my writing that the work is reminiscent of reporting in the mental health sector. I believe that is not so bad, but of course in the mental health sector you learn to observe and communicate about it to others with a certain distance. Indeed, images and stories can speak for themselves. But I very consciously wanted to portray both their strength and the diversity of their experiences.
How did you get this long-term, internationally oriented project off the ground? It must have taken quite a bit of time, energy and money.
I developed it step by step. I usually take a kind of research trip, to places and people. I had been given names of people who could help me further. In Norway, where Lebensborn was very big, I talked to historians and people who had already exposed themselves publicly as Lebensborn children. Gisela Heidenreich had already written a book about her life. I travelled in Germany and Norway and did research at the Arolsen Archives in Bad Arolsen. The largest collection of data on persecuted and victims of the Nazi regime in the world is there. I met with Lebensborn children to get to know them, without already committing to a plan, let alone an outcome. If it felt good from both sides then we could move on. And that’s how they started helping me.
And then fundraising came around the corner?
The idea grew and so I was granted Stipend Dialogue from FOTODOK in 2019. I then received contributions from the Mondriaan Fund and the Anna Cornelis Fund. For the book, I also received support from a number of other funds: besides the Mondriaan Fund, the Jaap Harten Fund, the Culture Fund of the Municipality of Rotterdam, the Centre for Visual Arts in Rotterdam and the Province of South Holland. Finally, to get the book funded, I started a crowdfunding campaign, which fortunately succeeded.
For you, was it primarily a history project – asks this historian – or rather a photography project?
It was really primarily a photography project, but a story that could not be told with photography alone. It needed text, apart from the interviews also explanations of some objects, such as the instrument to measure skull size, the spoon with Lebensborn logo, or the documents. But the photographs are paramount, showing what it is all about, even in a broad context.
As context, you also show the natural surroundings of the Lebensborn homes. In doing so, you portray individual trees.
When I was doing my research, I regularly walked into a forest to process everything. I think the forest also has the function of a resting point in my book. At the same time, the very old big trees fascinated me because they were already there during the Second World War and are therefore a kind of silent witnesses. What is called ‘guilty landscape’ has always fascinated me. It is extraordinary how things that are in principle very innocent, like nature, or a teddy bear, or a spoon, can nevertheless take on a guilty character in this context. The landscape, too, thus becomes a co-bearer of the story. We should be well aware that the existence of these institutions had to be kept secret. What we now see as a hotel by a fjord, in innocent-looking surroundings, was, on closer inspection, one of those clinics.
From your other work, for example the one about your neighbours in Rotterdam, I see that you want to photograph people in their personal environment. This is also how we see the Lebensborn children in their living rooms.
There may be a similarity, but in this case I approached it from the question of how to photograph people who were part of a programme that focused so much on external features. You’re not going to portray them against a neutral background, and then solely their faces. Then suddenly it’s only about the colour of their eyes or hair, and so you would follow the approach of the perpetrators. I really didn’t want that, so I photographed them as if I were just visiting. And I really like working with present light. That shows people as they are.
What impact might your book have on contemporary voices addressing birth politics and ethnicity?
I chose not to make an explicit connection in the book with politicians who are currently saying that not enough Dutch children are being born. I didn’t want that to determine the debate about the book. My primary concern was that the story about these people would be true and that it would not be forgotten. But anyone who takes the book in hand can obviously make the link to contemporary racial discourse very well. I also didn’t think this would take off in such a big way. When I wrote my application for FOTODOK, I did hint at those flirting with right-wing nationalism, but what we see now is no longer a flirtation….
The big theme in your book seems to me to be trauma across generations. How did that work for your characters? Lebensborn did have a very profound impact on their lives, although it seems like they each found a way to cope with it.
The shocking experiences of earlier generations are certainly something you carry with you. In a way, you identify with what your ancestors did and experienced. Like me with my grandmother who helped people in hiding in Aalten. But in other circumstances, you can feel guilty or ashamed about it. The people I met were simply very much searching for their roots, for love and closeness, which they had often been deprived of.
Do you have a follow-up project in mind?
I am still orientating, still interested in family histories and intergenerational trauma, as well as a topic like women’s rights. But coming up with a new project takes time and reflection.
Peter Romijn, with great thanks to Angeniet Berkers, november 2024
The documenatation images were taken by Lousiana van Onna for the FOTODOK BOOKTALKS.
The photo book LEBENSBORN is published by Eriskay Connection and can be ordered HERE.
