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Summary
Tinder, other dating apps, ‘marriage for all’: some are turned off by the new world of love, others welcome it as an embodiment of greater freedom and self-determination. This chapter leads us back to the 1920s, when the question of who could love whom in what way and with what consequences was an issue, too. During the Nazi period, same-sex relationships were prohibited, as were those between Jews and non-Jews or between Germans and workers from Eastern Europe. In the early years of the Federal Republic, ‘mixed marriages’ between Catholics and Protestants were strongly opposed. Only gradually did the view that love was a private affair gain foothold. The state, too, had fallen out of favour as an object of desire, at least in the West. Whereas East German teachers had to instil in their pupils ‘love for the socialist fatherland’, Federal President-elect Gustav Heinemann remarked in 1969, in response to the question of whether he loved his country: ‘I love my wife. That’s all.’
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- The Power of EmotionsA History of Germany from 1900 to the Present, pp. 256 - 279Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023