Postwar Adoptions

Connected postwar lives across Germany, Austria, Denmark and the United States.

Black German children adopted to Denmark and those adopted to the United States belong to the same postwar generation and broader German-born cohort. Black Austrian children form a closely related cohort within that wider generation. Reading these histories together brings family separation, racial exclusion, migration and adoptees’ continuing lives into a shared frame.

One generation, connected histories

Adoption destinations shaped children’s languages, family environments and experiences of racial belonging. Those differences are part of a connected history. The Denmark and U.S. pages follow German-born children across different borders; the Austrian page widens the comparison to children born under a related occupation and welfare system.

The country pages provide sources and reading notes for these pathways. They distinguish documented findings from comparative interpretation, and material consulted in full from abstracts or publication notices.

Lives that continue beyond placement

For BGHRA, adoption history also includes the decades that follow: family relationships, testimony, searches, reconnection, community formation and the work adoptees undertake to interpret and preserve their own histories. Children who remained with relatives, experienced foster or institutional care, or were never adopted abroad also belong within the wider history of the postwar generation.

Shared research questions include how racial assumptions shaped welfare decisions; what support mothers and families could obtain; what individual records reveal about separation and consent; and how adults recover knowledge and relationships across borders. Comparison should make these questions visible while preserving differences between people and places.

Girlhood, family separation & belonging

Sonya Donaldson, “‘How does it feel to be a problem?’ Black German Girlhood and the Historical Entanglements of Nation”. Women, Gender, and Families of Color 7, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 12–36.

A comparative reading of Doris McMillon’s Mixed Blessing and Ika Hügel-Marshall’s Invisible Woman, examining Black girlhood, disrupted family relationships, and racial and national belonging in Germany and the United States. Read alongside adoption histories to consider how autobiographical accounts make different childhood and family experiences visible.

Finland: Black childhood, care & belonging

Rose Marie Äikäs — “Avoin Kirja (Open Book)”

Rose Marie Äikäs contributed to the Life Histories panel at BGHRA’s Black Germans in Diaspora conference at Amherst College. The published program lists her presentation, “Avoin Kirja (Open Book),” for August 10, 2013, 4–6 p.m.

In “Black Germans: Coming Home to Self and Community,” Rosemarie H. Peña recalls Äikäs, a Black Finn, sharing her experience of growing up in an orphanage in postwar Finland. Her contribution places Black Finnish childhood and institutional care within BGHRA’s ongoing conversation about family, racial belonging and community across borders.

Watch the panel featuring Rose Marie Äikäs

Read the 2013 panel program ↗ · Explore the BGHRA 2013 conference

Meet Rose Marie Äikäs — biography & panel video →

Reference: Rosemarie H. Peña, “Black Germans: Coming Home to Self and Community,” in Silke Hackenesch, ed., Adoption across Race and Nation: US Histories and Legacies (Ohio State University Press, 2022), pp. 174–192, especially p. 189. Read the open-access book ↗

Adoption and racial belonging in Finland

Finland’s adoption history includes children adopted abroad, domestic adoption and, from the mid-1970s, international adoption into Finland. These different histories offer a comparative context for Black childhood and family separation. The sources cited here do not establish Finland as a destination for the German-born cohort discussed on the Denmark and United States pages.

Maarit G. Koskinen’s interview study of 14 adult international adoptees examines how racialization can challenge Finnish belonging, including through subtle encounters with people close to adoptees. It calls for support that recognizes racism and for action across families, communities and society. The study concerns a later, international-adoption population; it should be read alongside Äikäs’ life history with attention to their different circumstances.

Maarit G. Koskinen, “Racialization, Othering, and Coping Among Adult International Adoptees in Finland,” Adoption Quarterly 18, no. 3 (2015): 169–195. Publication record ↗ · Read the accepted manuscript ↗

Further BGHRA resources

Recognition and Redress connects this history to questions of acknowledgment and repair. RCTA-TRACE: Adoption, Culture, and Belonging introduces Peña’s framework for understanding adoptees’ relationships with family, culture and community.

Begin with any of the three country pages above for cited scholarship, sources in their original languages and notes on English paraphrases.