No More Anti-jewish Prayers in Thuringian Schools: Hitlerist Innovation Abolished by Thuringian Parl

The annulment of the various antisemitic acts introduced during the period of Hitlerist ascendancy, when Dr. Frick was Minister of the Interior and of Education, is being proceeded with by the Thuringian Parliament, in accordance with the declared attitude of the Parties after the dropping of the Hitlerists from the Coalition Government in consequence of the decision of the People’s Party to withdraw its support from the Frick regime. To-day, with all the Parties, Socialists, People’s Party, the Democratic State Party, and the Communists, voting against the Hitlerists, the Thuringian Parliament carried a motion which puts an end to the recital in the State schools of the antisemitic prayer which for about a year has been recited by the children there by Dr. Frick’s order.

God protect us from alien elements, says the prayer with which the school-work has had to start each day since it was introduced by Dr. Frick in May of last year. I state frankly, Dr. Frick declared in Parliament at the time in reply to an enquiry by the Socialists, that the prayer refers to the Jews, who are an alien element in Germany, and are perverting our national Germanic character.

The Socialists and the Democrats contended from the beginning that this prayer which the school-children have been compelled to recite each day, is a violation of the German Constitution. The matter was brought before the State Court which ruled that the prayer is illegal, but it nevertheless continued to be compulsory in the schools.

Dr. Witzmann, the spokesman of the People’s Party, which was in alliance with the Hitlerists in the Coalition Government in which Dr. Frick held office, declared in the Thuringian Diet a few days ago, amid vehement interruption from the Hitlerist side, that the People’s Party would vote for the motion introduced into the Diet by the Social Democratic Party that the antisemitic prayers recited in the Thuringian schools by Dr. Frick’s order should be removed from the school curriculum.

The People’s Party also disapproves, he said at the time, of Dr. Frick’s appointment of Dr. Guenther to the totally unnecessary Chair of “Raceology” at Jena University.