Nuremberg Laws

The ‘Nuremberg Laws’ introduced in 1935 formed a fundamental legal basis for the Nazis’ persecution of German Jews by determining who classed as a ‘Jew’ and thus drawing a legal distinction between ‘Jews’ and so-called ‘Aryans’. The ‘Nuremberg Laws’ were passed by the conformist ‘Reichstag’ parliament at the annual Nuremberg Rally (Reichsparteitag) of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) on September 15, 1935. These laws included the so-called ‘Blood Protection Law’ (Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor), the Reich Citizenship Law and the Reich Flag Law.

The law with the gravest consequences was the Reich Citizenship Law, which introduced ‘Reich citizenship’ and thus voided the citizenship that all Germans had hitherto possessed irrespective of their origin or religion. The law reserved ‘Reich citizenship’, which now determined people’s civic rights, exclusively for people of ‘Aryan’ extraction: “A Reich citizen is a subject of the state who is of German or related blood”. Members of a minority, such as Jews or Sinti/Sintize and Roma/Romnja, could not acquire or hold “Reich citizenship” and were thus demoted to the status of second-class citizens. The First Decree of the Reich Citizenship Law from November 14, 1935 defined who classed as a Jew or a “half-breed Jew”: people with one or two Jewish grandparents were “mixed race”; those with three or four Jewish grandparents classed as “fully Jewish”. Having one Jewish grandparent made one “Jewish” if that grandparent was a member of the Jewish religious community. People were also considered “fully Jewish” if they had at least one Jewish grandparent and regarded themselves as a member of the Jewish faith. The first decree also determined that only a “Reich citizen” could be the “bearer of full political rights”. Further decrees imposed restrictions on the work that people of Jewish extraction could perform, and transferred their estate into the possession of the state in the event of “a stay abroad”, which generally meant deportation when the law was introduced in 1941.

The ‘Blood Protection Law’ forbade marriage or extra-marital sexual relationships between people of Jewish extraction and ‘Aryans’. Existing marriages between Jews and ‘Aryans’ were not affected by this, though those involved often came under intense pressure to dissolve their marriage.

The Reich Flag Law made the swastika flag into the Reich flag and national flag as well as the civil ensign. Jews were banned from raising the swastika flag.