Martina Melding lost her child to the GDR
15-05-2025
Central Europe
René Zeeman, RD
Children were supposed to receive a politically correct upbringing. If this was unsure, they would be taken away. Photo AFP, Zentralbild
Central Europe
For years, babies born to so-called enemies of the state in the GDR were taken away at birth. Some mothers are still searching for their children to this day.
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“The upbringing of children is an important civic duty of parents, for which they receive recognition and appreciation from the state and society”, stated paragraph 42 of the GDR’s Family Code. However, if the upbringing did not meet the requirements of the socialist state, youth welfare services intervened to ensure an upbringing in line with the Communist Party’s ideology.
When did a mother fail, and when did the East German government step in? This happened when someone behaved in an “antisocial” manner or was considered “unreliable”. In such cases, a person’s right to care could be revoked. In the eyes of the communist government, a citizen was considered antisocial or unreliable if, for example, they submitted a request to travel to a country in the “capitalist West” or if someone tried to flee the “communist workers’ paradise”.
Abuse
Single mothers without a regular income or parents who objected to the rules in the GDR and opposed them were also told that they were failing and could lose their children. These children were then placed in a home or foster family.
How well were they cared for? Between 1949 and 1990, half a million children grew up in East German homes. A study by the University of Leipzig in 2023 shows that almost 70 per cent of those children were physically abused.
Particularly distressing are the cases of single women who gave birth in a clinic and whose children disappeared.
Daughter
Martina Melding is one such person. Over a year ago, she told the regional newspaper Oranienburger Generalanzeiger that she gave birth to a healthy daughter in June 1972. The next day, she was told that her child had been taken to the hospital in Henningsdorf due to breathing problems and had died there.
It appears that most women were unable to say goodbye to their children.
Melding is convinced that she has been deceived. “My daughter cried and screamed like other babies.” When she heard that her daughter had died, she submitted a request to see her child one last time, but this was refused. She was also given no information about what had happened to her child, whether she had been buried, or where.
Melding is still searching for her daughter. She is trying to find out more through various organisations that deal with this issue. In Germany, these include the Association for the Clarification of GDR Injustice and Unresolved Infant Deaths and the Stolen Children of the GDR foundation.
Injustice
The German government also takes the stories seriously and has investigated the matter. It appears that most women were unable to say goodbye to their children. Like Melding, several mothers were not even allowed to see their deceased babies. In many cases, the deceased children were buried anonymously. There is no grave to visit.
The paperwork from the clinics and hospitals is full of contradictions: the baby’s birth weight differs from the weight after death. One form states that it was a boy, another a girl.
The German government has not been dealing with the issue of stolen children for very long. The association agreement concluded in 1990 does not recognise forced adoptions as a political injustice. For this reason, those responsible for the abuses in the GDR did not formally break the law and cannot be prosecuted.
Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fate of the stolen children of the GDR is finally being systematically investigated. Historians and victims want the whole truth to come out. The newspaper Die Tagespost writes that despite all the obstacles, fathers and mothers who were separated from their children can hope they will be heard. “And that those responsible will be named in the history books for what they were: child thieves acting on behalf of a socialist regime.”
This article was translated by CNE.news and published by the Dutch daily Reformatorisch Dagblad on April 21, 2025
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