Allgemeine Stimmung

Even before the decree of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 (the “Reich Citizenship Law” and the “Law to Protect German Blood and Honor”), “racially based” legal clauses had been integrated into professional regulations for physicians. In April 1934, the admission regulations did not just specify that Jewish physicians and politically “unpopular” doctors were to be prevented from practicing medicine. The following were also explicitly excluded from admission: “Physicians of non-Aryan descent and physicians whose spouses are not of Aryan descent. Whoever has non-Aryan forebears, especially Jewish parents or grandparents, qualifies as non-Aryan. It is sufficient if one parent or one grandparent is of non-Aryan descent. This must be assumed in particular if one parent or one grandparent adhered to the Jewish religion. Extramarital descent also qualifies as ancestry,” according to an excerpt from the second ordinance of the admission regulations.

The discrimination and exclusion of “non-German-blooded” people took place in many forms, from the dissemination of anti-Semitic propaganda, to prohibitions against leisure activities, to marriage bans, to pervasive intrusions into the private sphere. In this last instance, even “German-blooded” people were affected by the “Marital Health Law” if they were considered “genetically inferior” instead of “hereditarily healthy.