Black Austrian Postwar Adoption

Austria-born Black children and their adoption to the United States form a vital part of the wider postwar history of race, family separation and belonging.

Welfare policy and adoption abroad

Austria was under Allied occupation from 1945 to 1955. Schretter and Stelzl-Marx describe welfare authorities treating children’s support as a financial burden. Their study identifies racial and class discrimination in adoption policy, including the continuation of placements of Black children from Salzburg after restrictions elsewhere. Its interview sample concerns British servicemen’s children; its account of Black children draws on other scholarship, including Rohrbach’s research. [1]

The 2016 SchwarzÖsterreich exhibition account documents adoption to the United States during the 1950s and 1960s and difficulties involving language and legal status. [2] Adoption is therefore a beginning for historical inquiry, rather than the endpoint of the children’s stories.

Research built from lives and records

Lost in Administration, based at the University of Salzburg from 2013, reconstructs the lives of children of Austrian women and African American soldiers through biographical interviews and Austrian and U.S. archives. The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute supported the resulting exhibition and a gathering of interview participants. [3]

The exhibition, curated by Philipp Rohrbach and Niko Wahl, incorporated Tal Adler’s video installation. [2] Its German title, SchwarzÖsterreich. Die Kinder afroamerikanischer Besatzungssoldaten, can be rendered as Black Austria: The Children of African American Occupation Soldiers. This is a working English rendering.

Published scholarship to pursue

Ingrid Bauer and Philipp Rohrbach edited Black GI Children in Post-World War II Europe, a 2021 issue of zeitgeschichte. The institutional publication notice describes research across Austria, West Germany, Britain and the United States on mothers and children, welfare institutions, overseas adoption and reception in segregated America. [4] Rohrbach’s contribution specifically addresses the adoption of Black Austrian children to the United States; the reference is listed in the open-access study below. [1]

Reading Austria alongside Germany, Denmark and the United States

These histories invite comparison of racial exclusion, separation, consent, care and migration. They also require attention to different places of birth, institutions and family circumstances. The Austrian–U.S. pathway should be included in the wider account without describing Austrian-born children as German-born or assuming that every placement followed the same pattern.

Adoptees’ continuing relationships, testimony and historical work belong at the center of that comparison. A useful account follows people throughout their lives and includes those who remained with relatives, lived in institutions or experienced other placements.

Sources and reading notes

1. Lukas Schretter and Barbara Stelzl-Marx (2022). “‘Collateral damage’ of occupation? Social and political responses to nonmarital children of Allied soldiers and Austrian women after the Second World War.” Frontiers in Political Science 4:822859. Open article. English; relevant sections and references consulted. Includes Rohrbach’s 2021 study, “‘This Has Finally Freed the Welfare Agency from a Considerable Burden’: The Adoption of Black Austrian Occupation Children in the United States.” That chapter has not been reviewed in full for this guide.
2. Vienna Wiesenthal Institute (2016). SchwarzÖsterreich. Exhibition account. German; consulted and paraphrased in English, rather than translated in full.
3. Vienna Wiesenthal Institute. Lost in Administration. German; institutional project description consulted and paraphrased in English.
4. Ingrid Bauer and Philipp Rohrbach, editors (2021). Black GI Children in Post-World War II Europe, zeitgeschichte 48(1). VWI publication notice. German notice consulted; the complete journal issue and the exhibition catalogue were not reviewed for this summary.

This selective research summary distinguishes consulted material from recommended reading. It does not determine the circumstances or legal status of any individual adoption.