Married to Intolerance: Attitudes towards Intermarriage in Germany, 1900-2006

Marriage is amongst the biggest decisions in life. In general, there is a tendency towards assortative matching – people marry others who are relatively similar to themselves. Intermarriage between different social, religious and ethnic groups in most societies is relatively rare (Blossfeld and Timm 2003). Where it occurs, it is associated with more rapid assimilation (Meng and Gregory 2005). The frequency of intermarriage can therefore serve as a useful indicator of tolerant attitudes towards a minority, and of the desire to integrate (Bisin, Topa, and Verdier 2004). In this paper, we analyze under which conditions intermarriage can be used as an indicator of tolerance, and whether such tolerant attitudes persisted in Germany during the last century. We combine information on individual-level attitudes from the German social survey (GESIS) with historical data on marriage patterns. In Nazi Germany, marriages between Jews and " Aryans " were considered a major threat to the racial purity of the German people. The strong trend towards more intermarriage between Jews and gentiles that characterized the Weimar years came to an abrupt end after 1933 (Figure 1). The Nuremberg racial laws placed heavy restrictions on intermarriage (Burleigh and Wippermann 1991). The NS regime compiled detailed statistics on the ethnic background of the population, classifying people as " full Jews " , " half Jews " , " quarter Jews ". These