Der Pass meiner Grossmutter. Zwischen Geschlechtergeschichte und Geschichte der Dinge

Passports, identity cards and membership cards are considered autobiographical objects of remembrance, often kept by the owners and their descendants as objects of identity far beyond their date of validity. The article deals with my grandparents' passport. German passport issued in 1929 in Berlin, a so-called family-passport, as it would be issued for married couples. It specifies the personal details of both spouses and lists the husband as the «holder» of the passport «accompanied by his wife», thus affirming her dependent status. This clearly contradicts the Weimar constitution of 1919, which established equal civil rights as well as equal matrimonial rights for men and women. The passport is thus proof of one of the many contradictions the Weimar Republic had to deal with and in fact shows that the traditional gender roles - as enshrined in the marriage law - had more weight than the constitution. An entry of May 10, 1945 is however evidence of «appropriation» by the wife, who used the passport - far from mere remembrance - for her identification, even 14 years after her husband's death.