Lecture: Child Adoption in 20th Century - Local Histories in Global Context

Abstract
The adoption of children is a phenomenon of the 20th century, the product of an increasing emotionalization of the child. This development began in the Global North and, with the advent of transnational adoption in the 1930s, led to a global adoption market. In this context, ideas about childhood, parenthood, origin, belonging and love were discussed and circulated globally. This took place against the background of asymmetrical power relations and differently defined concepts of which constitutes the best interest of the child. The lecture introduces the history of this global development with a view to individual local histories.

CV
Bettina Hitzer, Dr. phil., is Privatdozentin (ich finde das immer schwierig zu übersetzen?) at Freie Universität Berlin and Associate Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development Berlin, where she was head of a Minerva research group on "Disease and Emotions. History(s) of a Complex Relationship" (2014-2020). In 2016, she received the Walter de Gruyter Prize of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences for her research on the history of migration, religion, emotion and science. Her book "Krebs fühlen. Eine Emotionsgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts" was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2020 (non-fiction). She is currently working on a research project on the history of child adoption in the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany.