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Teaching the Holocaust and other Genocides
 
Created in collaboration with the Holocaust & Human Rights Center, the NYS Education Department, and the NYS Archives Partnership Trust.

Nuremberg Laws

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The Nuremberg Laws by their general nature formalized the unofficial and particular measures taken against Jews up to 1935. The Nazi leaders made a point of stressing the consistency of this legislation with the Party program which demanded that Jews should be deprived of their rights as citizens.  

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Discouraging German-Jewish Integration 
In 1933, Jewish businessman Oskar Danker and his girlfriend, a Christian woman, were forced to carry signs discouraging Jewish-German integration. Intimate relationships between “true Germans” and Jews were outlawed by 1935. 

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Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor 
(September 15, 1935) 

Entirely convinced that the purity of German blood is essential to the further existence of the German people, and inspired by the uncompromising determination to safeguard the future of the German nation, the Reichstag has unanimously resolved upon the following law, which is promulgated herewith: 

Section 1  

  1. Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this law are void, even if, for the purpose of evading this law, they were concluded abroad.  
  2. Proceedings for annulment may be initiated only by the Public Prosecutor.  

Section 2  

  1. Sexual relations outside marriage between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood are forbidden.  

Section 3  

  1. Jews will not be permitted to employ female citizens of German or kindred blood as domestic servants.  

Section 4  

  1. Jews are forbidden to display the Reich and national flag or the national colors.  

 

The Reich Citizenship Law 
(September 15, 1935) 

The Reich Citizenship Law stripped Jews of their German citizenship and introduced a new distinction between “Reich citizens” and “nationals.” Certificates of Reich citizenship were in fact never introduced and all Germans other than Jews were until 1945 provisionally classed as Reich citizens. 

Article I  

  1. A subject of the State is a person who belongs to the protective union of the German Reich, and who therefore has particular obligations towards the Reich.  
  2. The status of subject is acquired in accordance with the provisions of the Reich and State Law of Citizenship.  

Article 2  

  1. A citizen of the Reich is that subject only who is of German or kindred blood and who, through his conduct, shows that he is both desirous and fit to serve the German people and Reich faithfully.  
  2. The right to citizenship is acquired by the granting of Reich citizenship papers.  
  3. Only the citizen of the Reich enjoys full political rights in accordance with the provision of the laws.  

Article 3  

  1. The Reich Minister of the Interior in conjunction with the Deputy of the Fuhrer will issue the necessary legal and administrative decrees for carrying out and supplementing this law. 
Nuremberg Laws Chart
First Supplementary Decree of November 14, 1935 

On the basis of Article III of the Reich Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935, the following is hereby decreed: 

Article I  

  1. Until further provisions concerning citizenship papers, all subjects of German or kindred blood who possessed the right to vote in the Reichstag elections when the Citizenship Law came into effect, shall, for the present, possess the rights of Reich citizens. 

Article II 

  1. The provisions of Article I shall apply also to subjects who are of mixed Jewish blood. 
  2. An individual of mixed Jewish blood is one who is descended from one or two grandparents who, racially, were full Jews; insofar that he is not a Jew according to Section 2 of Article 5.  Full-blooded Jewish grandparents are those who belonged to the Jewish religious community. 

Article III 

  1. Only citizens of the Reich, as bearers of full political rights, can exercise the right of voting in political matters, and have the right to hold public office. The Reich Minister of the Interior, or any agency he empowers, can make exceptions during the transition period on the matter of holding public office.  The measures do not apply to matters concerning religious organizations. 

Article IV 

  1. A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich.  He cannot exercise the right to vote; he cannot hold public office. 
  2. Jewish officials will be retired as of December 31, 1935.   

Article V 

  1. A Jew is an individual who is descended from at least three grandparents who were, racially, full   Jews... 
  2. A Jew is also an individual who is descended from two full-Jewish grandparents if:   
  • (a) he was a member of the Jewish religious community when this law was issued, or joined the      community later; 
  • (b) when the law was issued, he was married to a person who was a Jew, or was subsequently married to a Jew; 
  • (c) he is the issue from a marriage with a Jew, in the sense of Section I, which was contracted after the coming into effect of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor of September 15, 1935; 
  • (d) he is the issue of an extramarital relationship with a Jew, in the sense of Section I, and was born out of  wedlock after July 31, 1936. 

Sources  

Noakes, Jeremy, and Geoffrey Pridham. Documents on Nazism 1919-1945. NY: Viking Press, 1974,
pp. 463-467, and The Nizkor Project