Abstract
This thesis examines how cross-border post could function as a survival strategy in the context of the Nazi dictatorship. A media-historical analysis is carried out around the case study of a former Swiss citizen and teacher who moved to Southern Germany 1926. After 1933, it was her legal status as a German, as well as the racial-legal categorisation of her husband as a Jew, which exposed the couple and their two children to considerable difficulties, discrimination and danger. Her international post is used to examine censorship, staying in contact with refugees and emigration plans. With reference to Antonovsky's concept of salutogenesis, the letters are considered as a medium of social support that strengthened the sense of coherence. Additionally, the relevance of the postal media of parcels and Red Cross messages, which is often not sufficiently comprehended in the Holocaust context, is underlined through an analysis of their functioning and supportive potentials.
Schürmann, Timothy