Aryan paragraph

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The Aryan paragraph refers to certain discriminatory provisions in laws , ordinances and statutes of state and non-state bodies (e.g. in laws on the civil service of the state or simply a discriminatory provision on membership in the rules of non-state associations), whereby only " Aryans " are permitted as members were, for example with § 3 of the National Socialist Act for the Restoration of the Civil Service of 1933. The distinction between “Aryans” and “non-Aryans” based on a “blood-bound” concept of biological descent is an expression of a perspective on population groups that consider aspects such as nationality, Religion was based, among other things, in the terms of a race theory and was able to stigmatize and exclude parts of the population through it.

Under National Socialism , regulations of this type were directed against the Jewish part of the population and against the Roma minority . They had forerunners in Germany and Austria since the spread of anti-Semitic and anti-Gypsy ideas and the völkisch movement from the last third of the 19th century.

Early Aryan paragraphs

At the request of Rudolf Kolisko , a member of the Viennese academic fraternity Libertas - Georg von Schönerer's regular association - it was already anchored in the association's statutes at the end of 1878 that “Jews could not be viewed as Germans”, effectively denying membership to this group . The Libertas fraternity was the first student union in the entire German-speaking area to introduce an Aryan paragraph.

The Austrian racial anti-Semite Georg von Schönerer expanded the Linz program of Austrian German nationalism in 1885 with one of the earliest documentable Aryan paragraphs. Many German national sports, singing, school and other clubs, reading circles and student associations have since also included such provisions in their statutes.

The alpine clubs were also among the pioneers . As early as the 1890s, individual sections in Germany and Austria introduced anti-Semitic paragraphs in their statutes: in Germany, for example, it was the Mark Brandenburg and Academic Section Munich , in Austria the Alpine Club Section Vienna (1905) and the Academic Section Vienna (1907) , the Austrian Tourist Club Vienna (1920), the General Association of the Austrian Tourist Club , the Austrian Mountain Association (1921), the Austrian Alpine Club (1921) and the Austria Section , the chairman of which, the fanatical anti-Semite Eduard Pichl , was in charge of the Aryan paragraph in its entirety German and Austrian Alpine Association to enforce. By autumn 1921, almost all Austrian sections implemented the so-called "Aryan principle". In response to the anti-Semitic regulations, the Donauland section was founded in the early summer of 1921 .

In the Weimar Republic , the German Burschenschaft, as the umbrella association of Austrian and German fraternities in Eisenach, decided in 1920 to freeze Jews and demanded a word of honor from all new members to be "free of Jewish or colored blood" and to have no Jewish or colored spouses or in the future to choose.

The German nobility cooperative accepted since 1920 only nobles "pure German blood " as members.

Even at the beginning not openly völkisch military organizations excluded people of Jewish origin after ideological conflicts over the " Jewish question ": so

Numerous right-wing extremist military associations were explicitly anti-Semitic (some of them were members of the umbrella organization United Fatherland Associations of Germany ) and did not accept Jews as members.

time of the nationalsocialism

On April 7, 1933, the National Socialist Reich government under Chancellor Adolf Hitler passed the law to restore the civil service . This first racist law of the Nazi regime followed the boycott of the Jews of April 1, 1933 and contained the instruction in paragraph 3: Civil servants who are not of Aryan descent are to be retired.

The first legal definition of the term “non-Aryan” can be found in the First Ordinance for the Implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of April 11, 1933 ( RGBl. I, p. 195): “Anyone from non-Aryan, in particular, is considered non-Aryan descends from Jewish parents or grandparents. It is enough if one parent or grandparent is not Aryan. “It was not a matter of religion for Jews; Conversion from the Mosaic to the Christian faith was irrelevant; rather, the law was explicitly racist .

The aim was to bring the civil service into line by dismissing unpopular civil servants, especially those who were Jewish and politically classified as opposition. With the law on the admission to the legal profession , the ordinance on the admission of doctors to work for the health insurance funds of April 22 and the law against the overcrowding of German schools and universities of April 25, the Aryan paragraph was subsequently issued more and more areas of social life expanded.

The introduction of the Aryan paragraph was the first step of the Nazi regime towards the legal exclusion of Jews and other so-called non-Aryans from society and their progressive disenfranchisement.

The second step was the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Race Laws of September 15, 1935, which abolished the exceptions that were initially still in effect, such as the front-line soldiers' privilege for Jewish soldiers from the First World War . Henceforth were u. a. Sexual relationships between members of different "races" are punishable by law (" Rassenschande ").

These laws were based on the assertion that an alleged “Jewish race ”, in contrast to the “Aryan race”, was characterized by inferior traits that were inherited. The “corrosive spirit” of the “inferior race” must be fought “with the means of racial hygiene ”.

Associations

Almost all organizations and associations also adopted Aryan paragraphs in their statutes and regulations since 1933.

Churches

In the area of ​​the German Evangelical Church (DEK), some regional churches had since autumn 1933, analogous to the state Aryan paragraph, the exclusion of Christians of Jewish origin from church offices: Pastors and senior church officials had to be retired if they had Jewish parents or at least one Jewish grandparent.

The general synod of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union , as the first leadership of an Evangelical regional church, passed such a church paragraph on September 6, 1933. On September 12, 1933, the Thuringian State Church Congress followed with an analogous "law on the position of church officials in relation to the nation". The regional churches in Saxony , Schleswig-Holstein , Braunschweig , Lübeck , Mecklenburg , Hessen-Nassau and Württemberg also decided to take corresponding measures in the following years . The exclusion affected a little over 100 people, mostly theologians. The initiative for this came from the church party of German Christians (DC), which since the church elections in July 1933 has been able to win several synodic majorities and church leaderships.

The old Prussian resolution prompted Martin Niemöller, along with other opponents of the DC, to found the Pastors' Emergency Association , whose members signed the sentence suggested or formulated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer :

"I testify that a violation of the creed was created with the application of the Aryan paragraph in the area of ​​the Church of Jesus Christ ."

At the same time, they should protect Christians of Jewish origin from attacks and provide them with material support. The theological faculties of Marburg and Erlangen prepared reports on the compatibility of the Aryan paragraph with the constitution of the DEK; the Marburgers denied this, the Erlanger only recommended cautious use. 20 German New Testament scholars declared that a church Aryan paragraph was not legitimized by the New Testament .

From this opposition to the DC emerged in 1934 the Confessing Church , which with its positions also rejected church Aryan paragraphs as heresy directed against the evangelical creed . State Aryan paragraphs, on the other hand, viewed most evangelical, even professing, Christians as politically permitted or even necessary.

See also

literature

  • Ursula Trüper: The blood of fathers and mothers. Otto Hegner and the Aryan Paragraph. In: Ulrich van der Heyden, Joachim Zeller (Ed.): … Power and share in world domination. Berlin and German colonialism. Unrast-Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-89771-024-2 .
  • Heinz Liebing (ed.): The Marburg theologians and the Aryan paragraph in the church: a collection of texts from the years 1933 and 1934. On the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the Philipps University of Marburg. 1st edition. Elwert, Marburg 1977, ISBN 3-7708-0578-X .
  • Wolfgang Gerlach: When the witnesses were silent. Confessing Church and the Jews. Studies on Church and Israel, Volume 10, Berlin 1987, ISBN 978-3-923095-69-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Michael Wladika : Hitler's generation of fathers. Böhlau, Vienna 2005, p. 50.
  2. The prehistory of the Aryan ancestral pass . In: Prehistory and consequences of the Aryan ancestral pass: On the history of genealogy in the 20th century. Neustadt an der Orla: Arnshaugk, 2013, pp. 12–40, ISBN 978-3-944064-11-6 .
  3. ^ The DAV and anti-Semitism , German Alpine Association
  4. Martin Achrainer: "So, now we are all to ourselves!" Anti-Semitism in the Alpine Association (PDF), in: Hanno Loewy , Gerhard Milchra: Have you seen my Alps? A Jewish Relationship Story , Hohenems / Vienna 2009
  5. ^ Walter Klappacher: Aryan Paragraph and Anti-Semitism in the Salzburg Cave Association - In memory of Dr. Ernst Hauser . In: Die Höhle, 56th year, issue 1–4 / 2005, p. 101
  6. ^ Peter Kaupp: Burschenschaft and anti-Semitism. (PDF file; 126 kB) p. 2.
  7. ^ Stephan Malinowski: From the king to the leader: Social decline and political radicalization in the German nobility between the German Empire and the Nazi state. 3. Edition. Akademie-Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-05-004070-X , p. 336.
  8. a b c d Wolfgang R. Krabbe: Political youth in the Weimar Republic. University Press Dr. N. Brockmeyer, Dortmund 1993, p. 157.
  9. Printed as Document VEJ 1/32 in: Wolf Gruner (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection): Volume 1: German Reich 1933–1937 , Munich 2008, ISBN 978- 3-486-58480-6 , pp. 137f.
  10. ^ In the shadow of the Nuremberg Laws . In: Prehistory and consequences of the Aryan ancestral pass. Neustadt an der Orla: Arnshaugk, 2013, pp. 151–178, ISBN 978-3-944064-11-6 .
  11. ^ Herbert Sallen: On anti-Semitism in the Federal Republic of Germany. Concepts, methods and results of empirical anti-Semitism research. Haag and Herchen, Frankfurt am Main 1977, p. 51ff.
  12. ^ Joachim Mehlhausen: National Socialism and Churches. In: Theological Real Encyclopedia. Volume 24, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1994, pp. 54f.
  13. Jan Rohls: Protestant Theology of Modern Times Volume 2: The 20th Century. Mohr / Siebeck, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-16-146644-6 , p. 405f.