Super rare original porcelain Lebensborn plate used in an unknown Lebensborn house
Price: | $480.00 |
We offer for sale this super rare and scarce item. It is a plate used in one of the infamous Lebensborn centres that SS and Heinrich Himmler established in Germany and occupied lands such as Poland or Norway to increase the Aryan population. This obscure plan was carried out in many houses spreaded all over Europe, and it's in one of those houses or "Heim" where this plate was used. This plate is complete with no chips or damage to the porcelain apart from some superficial crack on the bottom that doesn't affect at all to the quality of the piece. It's marked in blue "Lebensborn-Heim" (Lebensborn House), the generic name for all the houses of this program. On the reverse, it's maker marked with the high quality manufacturer mark "Bauscher - Weiden" and the motto "Model des Amtes - Schönheit der Arbeit" with the Deutsche Arbeitsfront stamp. Finding the secret Lebensborn plates and glasses or cuttlery is really difficult, since after the war most of them were lost.
Lebensborn e.V. (literally: "Fount of Life") was an SS-initiated, state-supported, registered association in Nazi Germany with the goal of raising the birth rate of Aryan children of persons classified as racially pure and healthy based on Nazi racial hygiene and health ideology. Lebensborn provided welfare to its mostly unmarried mothers, encouraged anonymous births by unmarried women at their maternity homes, and mediated adoption of these children by likewise racially pure and healthy parents, particularly SS members and their families. The Cross of Honour of the German Mother was given to the women who bore the most Aryan children. Abortion was legalised by the Nazis for disabled children, but strictly punished otherwise.
Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded into several occupied European countries with Germanic populations during the Second World War. It included the selection of racially worthy orphans for adoption and care for children born from Aryan women who had been in relationships with SS members. It originally excluded children born from unions between common soldiers and foreign women, because there was no proof of racial purity on both sides. During the war, many children were kidnapped from their parents and judged by Aryan criteria for their suitability to be raised in Lebensborn homes, and fostering by German families.
At the Nuremberg Trials, much direct evidence was found of the kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany, across Greater Germany during the period 1939–1945.
Initially the programme served as a welfare institution for wives of SS officers; the organization ran facilities – primarily maternity homes – where women could give birth or get help with family matters. The programme also accepted unmarried women who were either pregnant or had already given birth and were in need of aid, provided that both the woman and the father of the child were classified as "racially valuable". About 60% of the mothers were unmarried. The program allowed them to give birth secretly away from home without social stigma. In case the mothers wanted to give up the children, the program also had orphanages and an adoption service. When dealing with non-SS members, parents and children were usually examined by SS doctors before admission.