New regulations issued today by the German authorities provide that every lawyer and judge in Germany must, before the first of January, prove that his grandparents through the fourth generation did not belong to the Jewish religion even by birth. In addition, the lawyers and jurists must produce their family trees for the last four generations showing that they are descended from a pure Aryan stock. If they fail to produce the proofs demanded by Nazi authorities, they will be considered as non-Aryans, and although they will be permitted to retain the right to practice, they will be excluded from the Nazi Lawyers Association.
One curious and most novel clause in the new regulations reads as follows: “Aryans eligible to membership in the lawyers’ association will be only those establishing that they have no more than twelve and one half per cent Jewish blood in their veins.”
On January 10, the authorities announced, the German Jurists Directory will appear. The names of all Jewish jurists or Jewish lawyers, descendants of Jews, or who intermarried with Jews, will be omitted.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
