The Nuremberg Laws from 1935 — Totalitarian racist misanthropy and anti-Semitism cast in clauses

During the Nazi party rally held in Nuremberg on September 15, 1935, the Reichstag, which at the time was only active as a sham parliament, enacted three laws, whereby the Reich Citizen Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor aimed to strip all political rights from German citizens of Jewish heritage. 

In addition, these laws were also meant to justify the anti-Semitic pogroms and persecution as well as robbing and expulsion of Jews that had begun already in 1933. These pseudo-laws were followed by further decrees, which, among other things, provided a biologistic-racist definition for who is to be considered a Jew and in part, stigmatized those of Jewish origins as being half, quarter, or three-quarter Jews.

Although parliamentary democracy was long defunct, the Nazi regime attempted to use all possible means to disguise its blatant regime of terror through a positivist, legal construct of an illegal state.

The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, is therefore the attempt to prevent any future occurrences of such misogynistic measures in legal form, as after the smashing of the Nazi reign of terror, at the latest, the international public realized that the systematic deprivation of rights and persecution of Jews, but also subsequently of Roma and Sinti and other stigmatized groups, had been the start of the unfathomable path to the Holocaust.

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. Oliver Rathkolb            15.1.2024

English translation: Lisa Rosenblatt