Reich Bride Schools

The Reich Bride Schools (German: Reichsbräuteschule) were institutions established in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. They were created to train young women to be "perfect Nazi brides," indoctrinated in Nazi ideology and educated in housekeeping skills. The fiancées of prominent SS members and senior Nazi Party officials (and later a wider range of German women) were taught skills ranging from cooking, child care, ironing and to how to polish their husbands' uniforms and daggers. They were required to swear oaths of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, to pledge to raise their children as Nazis and to marry in pre-Christian 'Germanic' ceremonies presided over by Nazi officials, rather than in churches.

Although a number of bride schools were established in locations across Germany, the demands of the Second World War made it impossible for the Nazis to realise their ideal of women as being exclusively home-bound. Many women took up work instead in munitions factories and other war-related roles. Even so, the schools appear to have continued until as late as May 1944 but their existence faded from memory after the war, perhaps as a result of an unwillingness on the part of former Nazi brides to discuss their enrollment. The discovery in 2013 of original documentation relating to the schools resulted in fresh attention being brought to this particular chapter in the history of Nazi Germany.

Women had a clearly defined position in the Nazi worldview. They were not deemed suitable for professions such as medicine, the law or the civil service, from which they were banned. They were instead expected to stay at home, maintain the household and have as many children as possible. A woman's place was defined by the slogan kinder, küche, kirche (children, kitchen, church). Reproductive success was rewarded with the Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter (Cross of Honour of the German Mother), which was awarded in bronze, silver and gold ranks – the latter going to mothers who had eight or more children. The Nazis considered that the social changes that had taken place since the end of the First World War, including a fall in birth rates and an increasing number of divorces, were undermining German society and the German race. Large families and a reversion to traditional gender roles were seen as essential, not least as a means of breeding future soldiers. The Nazi government passed a Law for the Encouragement of Marriage which enabled newlyweds take out a state loan of 1,000 reichsmarks (approximately €3,500) and keep a quarter for each child they had, in effect subsidising procreation.

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