Abstract

On April 7,1933, ten weeks after Hitler’s accession to power as Chancellor, a law was promulgated with the innocuous sounding title “Law for the Restitution of the Permanent Civil Service.”* One might at first assume that it was designed to lay the legal foundation for the dismissal of civil servants who, during the Weimar Republic, had belonged to a party of the left and been given administrative duties not on the basis of their training but for party-political reasons (such dismissals had already been practised by the von Papen government). But, in fact, the first sentence of § 3 showed the law’s true intent and spelt disaster for German Jews: “Civil servants who are not of aryan descent are to be retired... .” A more detailed definition followed in the First Order of Implementation of April 11,1933: “That person is considered not aryan who descends from nonaryan, especially Jewish parents or grandparents... .” As if this was not clear enough, further explanation was added: “It suffices if one parent or one grandparent is non-aryan... .” Thus all professors and directors of institutes [they were legally civil servants] who came under this law lost their right to teach and soon after also to publish. In April and May 1933 the validity of this law was extended to university lecturers who were not civil servants, as well as to employees and workers in public services. “The files say little about the suffering of the affected who without any preparation suddenly had the experience that the State, up to now respected and understood, arbitrarily destroyed a secure existence as civil servant or a promising academic career.” [Mussgnug/Wolgast:7].KeywordsCivil ServantForeign CurrencyBook TradeTitle PageGerman JournalThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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