Nuremberg Laws - Background History

Background History

Before 1806, when general citizenship was largely non-existent in the Holy Roman Empire, its inhabitants were subject to different estate regulations. Varying from one territory of the Empire to another, these regulations classified inhabitants into different groups, such as dynasts, members of the court entourage, other aristocrats, city dwellers (burghers), Jews, Huguenots (in Prussia a special estate until 1810), free peasants, serfs, peddlers and Gypsies, with different privileges and burdens attached to each classification. Legal inequality was the principle.

The concept of citizenship was mostly restricted to cities, especially free imperial cities. There was no general franchise, which remained a privilege for the few, who inherited the status or acquired it when they reached a certain level of taxed income or could afford the expensive citizen's fee (Bürgergeld). Citizenship was often further restricted to city dwellers affiliated with the locally dominant Christian denomination (Calvinist, Catholic or Lutheran). City dwellers of other denominations or religions and those who lacked the necessary wealth to qualify as citizens were considered as mere inhabitants who lacked political rights and were sometimes subject to revocable staying permits.

Most Jews then living in German locales that allowed their settlement were automatically defined as mere indigenous inhabitants, depending on permits that were typically less generous than those granted to Gentile indigenous inhabitants. In the 18th c. some Jews and their families (such as Daniel Itzig in Berlin) gained equal status with their fellow Christian city dwellers, but had a different status than noblemen, Huguenots, or serfs. They often did not enjoy the freedom of movement across territorial or even municipal boundaries, let alone enjoy the same status in the new place as in the old.

With the abolition of legal status differences in the Napoleonic era and its aftermath citizenship was established as a new franchise generally applying to all former subjects of the monarchs. While Jewish emancipation did not eliminate all forms of discrimination against Jews, who often remained barred from holding official positions with the State, such forms of discrimination were no longer the guiding principle for ordering society, but a violation of it. These restrictions were mostly abolished in the 1840s, in few smaller states as late as 1869.

In the mid-19th century, the fiercely anti-Semitic völkisch movement appeared in Germany. One of the major demands of the various völkisch groups had been the disemancipation of German Jews and banning sexual relations between those considered to be of the “Semitic race” and those considered to be of the “Aryan race”. In 1881, a petition presented to the German government by the völkisch groups demanding Jewish disemancipation and the banning of marriage and sexual intercourse between “Aryans” and “Jews” had collected over a million signatures. Reflecting the strength of the völkisch movement, from 1892 when the so-called Tivoli Program was adopted, the Conservative Party formally advocated disemancipation of German Jews. In his best-selling 1912 book Wenn ich der Kaiser wär (If I were the Kaiser), Heinrich Class, the leader of one of the more powerful völkisch groups, the Alldeutscher Verband, urged that all German Jews be stripped of their German citizenship and be reduced to Fremdenrecht (alien status). Class went on to urge in Wenn ich der Kaiser wär that Jews be totally excluded from all aspects of German life with Class recommending that Jews be forbidden to own land, hold public office, and to participate in journalism, banking, and the liberal professions.

Within Germany, persecution of the Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) long preceded the Nazi regime. In 1899, Alfred Dillmann established the Central Office for Fighting the Gypsy Nuisance in Munich. This office collected information and the fingerprints of Gypsies. In 1926 in Bavaria, the ‘Law for the Combating the Gypsies, Travellers, and Work-Shy’ required the systematic registration of all Sinti and Roma, and sent Gypsies over 16 to workhouses for two years if they could not prove regular employment. The law prohibited Gypsies from "roam about or camp in bands," and this law became the national norm in 1929.