Nuremberg Laws (1935): Nazi Germany's Racial Laws Against Jews

The Nuremberg Laws were two antisemitic laws passed by the Reichstag of Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, during the Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. They stripped German Jews of full citizenship and banned marriages and sexual relationships between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. By turning racist ideology into written law, they gave the persecution of Jews a legal framework and became a key stage on the road to the Holocaust.

Background

When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, about 500,000 Jews lived in Germany, less than one per cent of the population. Most were fully integrated citizens, many of them veterans of the First World War. Nazi ideology, however, treated Jews as a separate and dangerous “race” that had to be removed from German life.

Persecution began at once. On 1 April 1933 the regime staged a national boycott of Jewish shops and professionals. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933 drove most Jews out of public employment, with temporary exceptions for front-line veterans. Further measures excluded Jews from the press, the arts and many professions. After the Enabling Act gave Hitler’s government power to legislate without parliament, there was no legal barrier to such rules.

By the summer of 1935 Nazi activists were carrying out a wave of street violence and local boycotts, demanding a ban on “mixed” marriages. Some ministers, including Reich Bank president Hjalmar Schacht, worried that uncontrolled violence harmed the economy and Germany’s image abroad. The leadership wanted to channel the pressure from below into orderly legislation.

How the laws were drafted

The laws were written in great haste. Hitler had planned to address the Reichstag, summoned to Nuremberg for the party rally, on foreign policy. Instead, on 13 September 1935 he ordered officials of the Interior Ministry, among them Bernhard Lösener, an expert on “Jewish affairs”, to fly to Nuremberg and draft a law on blood and marriage. They worked through two nights under Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick and State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart.

Several versions were prepared, ranging from mild to harsh. Hitler chose a relatively short text and, crucially, left the definition of who counted as a Jew to be settled later. A citizenship law was added at the last moment. A third measure, the Reich Flag Law, made the swastika banner the national flag. It was partly a response to an incident in New York in July 1935, when protesters tore the swastika from the German liner Bremen.

On the evening of 15 September the Reichstag, by then a body made up only of Nazi deputies, passed all three laws unanimously. Hermann Göring, as president of the Reichstag, read them out.

What the laws said

The Reich Citizenship Law distinguished between “Reich citizens”, who had to be of “German or kindred blood”, and mere “state subjects”. Only Reich citizens could enjoy full political rights. Jews were thereby reduced to subjects: they lost the right to vote and to hold public office, and the remaining Jewish civil servants, including war veterans, were dismissed by the end of 1935.

The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour banned marriages between Jews and citizens of “German or kindred blood” and declared such marriages void if contracted abroad to evade the law. It made sexual relations outside marriage between the two groups a crime, which the regime called Rassenschande (“race defilement”). Jews were forbidden to employ German women under 45 as domestic servants and to fly the national flag.

Defining a “Jew”

The laws did not say who was Jewish, and officials argued for weeks over the answer. The First Supplementary Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law, issued on 14 November 1935, set out the rules:

• A person with three or four Jewish grandparents was a “full Jew”.
• A person with two Jewish grandparents was a “Mischling of the first degree”, but counted as a Jew if they belonged to the Jewish religious community or were married to a Jew.
• A person with one Jewish grandparent was a “Mischling of the second degree”.

Despite the language of “blood”, the regime had no biological test. A grandparent was classed as Jewish if he or she had belonged to the Jewish religious community. Families therefore had to prove their ancestry with baptismal and marriage records, and the Ahnenpass (ancestry passport) became part of everyday life. Official charts, like the one illustrating this article, explained the categories to the public.

Within weeks the marriage ban was extended by official commentary and decree to Roma and Black people, who were also described as of “alien blood”.

How the laws were applied

Courts enforced the blood law harshly. Thousands of people were investigated for “race defilement” in the later 1930s, and many were sent to prison; men were usually prosecuted, and some of those convicted were later sent to concentration camps after serving their sentences. Neighbours and colleagues often triggered cases by denouncing people to the police.

The regime briefly softened its public face in 1936. During the Berlin Olympics many antisemitic signs were removed to impress foreign visitors. Persecution resumed afterwards and grew more radical, culminating in the violence of Kristallnacht in November 1938.

The Reich Citizenship Law proved especially useful to the regime because it allowed new restrictions by decree. Thirteen supplementary decrees followed. The eleventh, of 25 November 1941, removed German nationality from Jews living abroad, including those deported to the East, and transferred their property to the state. The thirteenth, of 1 July 1943, put Jews outside the ordinary courts and under police control.

Consequences

The laws marked a turning point. Jews in Germany were now legally second-class residents in their own country. Emigration rose, though many found it hard to leave because of strict immigration limits abroad and the heavy taxes and fees the regime imposed on departing Jews.

The categories created in 1935 also shaped the later genocide. When senior officials met at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 to coordinate the deportation and murder of Europe’s Jews, they spent much time discussing how to treat “Mischlinge” and mixed marriages, using the Nuremberg definitions as their starting point. Similar racial laws were adopted by Germany’s allies, including Fascist Italy in 1938 and Hungary in 1938 and 1939.

Myths and facts

Myth: the laws used biology to define race. In practice the regime relied on the religious records of a person’s grandparents. A Christian whose grandparents had been members of a synagogue could be classed as a Jew.

Myth: the laws were the product of long planning. Antisemitic legislation had been discussed for years, but the final texts were drafted in about two days for the party rally, and the key question of definition was left open.

Timeline

• 1933, 1 April: National boycott of Jewish businesses across Germany.
• 1933, 7 April: Civil service law removes most Jews from public employment.
• 1935, 13 September: Interior Ministry officials are summoned to Nuremberg to draft a law on blood and marriage.
• 1935, 15 September: The Reichstag passes the Reich Citizenship Law, the Blood Protection Law and the Reich Flag Law.
• 1935, 14 November: First Supplementary Decree defines “Jews” and “Mischlinge”.
• 1941, 25 November: Eleventh Decree strips nationality and property from Jews outside Germany, including deportees.
• 1943, 1 July: Thirteenth Decree places Jews outside the protection of the courts.
• 1945, 20 September: Allied Control Council Law No. 1 repeals the Nuremberg Laws.

Why it matters

The Nuremberg Laws showed how a modern state could use ordinary legal procedures to exclude a minority. They converted prejudice into bureaucratic categories that courts, registrars and police could apply, and those categories were later used to select people for deportation. Their history is a reminder that persecution often advances first through laws and paperwork before it turns to mass violence.