Introduction
On the evening of 15 September 1935, two measures were announced to the Reichstag at the annual Party Rally in Nuremberg, becoming known as the Nuremberg Laws.
The first law, The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, prohibited marriages and extramarital intercourse between "Jews" (the name was now officially used in place of "non-Aryans") and "Germans" and also the employment of "German" females under forty-five in Jewish households. The second law, The Reich Citizenship Law, declared those not of German blood to be Staatsangehörige (state subjects) while those classified as "Aryans" were Reichsbürger (citizens of the Reich). Between November 1935 to July 1943, 13 implementation ordinances were issued dealing with the enforcement of Reich Citizenship Law that progressively marginalized the Jewish community in Germany.
Hitler appeared before the Reichstag in Nuremberg, introducing the laws and their alleged motivation, before the laws were formally read and proposed for adoption by Hermann Göring, the President of the Reichstag. In his speech he laid out his case for the new laws:
...Bitter complaints have come in from countless places citing the provocative behavior of Jews....a certain amount of planning was involved.... vigorous defensive action by the people, we have no choice but to contain the problem through legislative measures....it may be possible, through a definitive secular solution, to create a basis on which the German people can have a tolerable relationship with the Jews. ... This law is an attempt to find a legislative solution....if this attempts fails, it will be necessary to transfer ... to the National Socialist Party for a final solution by law (German: endgültige Lösung).
The measures were unanimously adopted by the Reichstag. In 12 years of Nazi rule, the Reichstag only passed four laws: the Nuremberg laws were two of them.
The Nuremberg Laws 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 programme, which demanded that Jews should be deprived of their citizenship rights.
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