Reich Office for Family Research

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The Reichsstelle für Kippenforschung (RfS), renamed the Reichssippenamt on November 12, 1940 , was an office of the Reich Ministry of the Interior during the National Socialist era , which in cases of doubt decided whether the so-called Aryan certificate certified "Aryan racial affiliation".

Expert in race research

The necessity of an assessment by experts arose initially from the determination of the breed criterion in individual laws (or ordinances) and their implementing ordinances. The first implementing regulation for the law for the restoration of the civil service of April 11, 1933 determined that proof of Aryan descent had to be provided. For this purpose, a questionnaire had to be filled out and the birth certificate , the birth or baptism certificates of the parents and grandparents, and the marriage or marriage certificates of the parents and grandparents had to be brought in. Only certified extracts from civil registers or church books were recognized. The officers had to submit the required documents to the head of the authority within fourteen days. If they could not produce the necessary documents, then they had to present the correspondence of the parish and registry offices to which they had written to prove their serious efforts . In cases of doubt, the department of the "Expert for Race Research" at the Reich Ministry of the Interior in Berlin should be consulted, which could also provide information for further research.

In the case of adoptions , illegitimate births and in all cases of doubt, the head of the authority had to obtain the decision of the specialist minister or the supervisory authority, which in turn requested an expert opinion from the "Expert for Race Research" in the Reich Ministry of the Interior. Achim Gercke headed this office with around 60 employees until he was dismissed in March 1935 on the charge that he had contacts with homosexual circles.

Reich Office for Family Research

Since mid-March 1935, the office was headed under the new name "Reichsstelle für Kippenforschung" by Kurt Mayer , who also became Reichsamtsleiter of the office for kin research of the NSDAP , which was responsible for checking the origin of members of the NSDAP.

Since with the Nuremberg Laws the proof of “a German or related descent” in marriages according to the Reich Citizenship Act became important for the acquisition of Reich citizenship and the exercise of the profession, the number of applications rose considerably. The necessary documents were usually checked by party offices and mayors. In cases of doubt, the Reichsstelle had to be called in, which checked the information or showed how missing documents could be found.

The so-called “great proof of parentage”, which was a basic requirement for membership in the NSDAP , for a university degree or for editors and hereditary farm farmers , was provided by a documented pedigree that had to go back to 1800. Only the race of the grandparents was researched for the “small proof of parentage”. In the case of unresolved family relationships, births out of wedlock and in all cases of doubt, the Reich Office made a decision, which in the course of time requested several thousand “hereditary and racial biology reports” from university institutes. 

Since November 1933 the ancestral register of the German people was also in the Reichsstelle. The collection of the ancestral lists and the ancestral family files only gained their importance through the dates before 1800. They fell outside the scope of the Reich Office. As early as the spring of 1935, a commission from the Reich Court of Auditors questioned the necessity for the ancestral register to be located at the Reich Office and to be co-financed by it. Since the financial situation did not improve even after the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler inspected the ancestral records on February 11, 1938, the records department moved back to Dresden on April 5, 1939, to the office of the German Ancestral Association .

The tasks of the Reich Office also included securing old church registers, promoting clan research and evaluating Jewish civil status registers and all birth, marriage and death registers maintained by the Jewish synagogue communities, as well as circumcision books , cemetery registers and lists of community members. This resulted in the forced cooperation with the Reich Association of Jews in Germany , whose staff had to search the archive for sensitive documents on a case-by-case basis. Corresponding documents were also confiscated in the General Government through the commanders of the security police and the security service. The documents were collected in the Central Office for Jewish Family Status Registers in the Altreich in Berlin, which was set up by the Reichssippenamt in the rooms of the former General Archives of German Jews . They were later brought to Rathsfeld Castle on Kyffhäuser for air protection reasons and filmed there from 1943–1945 by the Gatermann brothers in Duisburg. After the war, these films were offered for sale by the Gatermann company to those responsible in various West German countries.

The Reichsstelle was renamed “Reichssippenamt” on November 12, 1940. The establishment of an office with this name was first requested in 1920 by Bernhard Koerner in the foreword to volume 32 of the German Gender Book. By then, the Reich Office, which employed up to 125 people, had already issued over 112,000 notices of parentage.

A part of the extensive tradition of the Reichssippenamt is now located next to that of the German ancestral community in the Saxon State Archives, Leipzig State Archives. It includes the following family history collections of the Reichssippenamt: church books, military church books, Jewish civil status documents, Huguenots, genealogical collections, seal collection and coat of arms collections. (See web links)

literature

  • Andreas Rett , Horst Seidler : The Reichssippenamt decides. Racial Biology in National Socialism , Youth and the People, Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-224-16508-1 .
  • Diana Schulle: The Reichssippenamt. An institution of National Socialist racial policy. Logos Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89722-672-3 . At the same time dissertation from the University of Greifswald 1999.
  • Alexandra Przyrembel : "Rassenschande". Purity myth and legitimation for extermination under National Socialism. Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-35188-7 .
  • Eric Ehrenreich: The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN 2007. ISBN 978-0-253-34945-3 .
  • Roman Trips-Hebert: The Forgotten Office , Merkur # 839, 2019, pp. 77-83.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reichssippenamt (inventory) - German digital library. In: deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de. April 7, 1933, Retrieved October 16, 2019 .
  2. see Regulation on the restoration of the civil service - §3 (2)
  3. ^ In the shadow of the Nuremberg Laws . In: Volkmar Weiss : Prehistory and consequences of the Aryan ancestral pass: On the history of genealogy in the 20th century. Arnshaugk, Neustadt an der Orla 2013, ISBN 978-3-944064-11-6 , pp. 151–178.
  4. ^ Diana Schulle: Das Reichssippenamt. An institution of National Socialist racial policy. Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89722-672-3 , p. 65.
  5. ^ Diana Schulle: Das Reichssippenamt ... ISBN 3-89722-672-3 , p. 86.
  6. ^ Encyclopedia of National Socialism, ISBN 3-423-33007-4 , p. 346.
  7. ^ The association "Deutsche Anhnengemeinschaft" 1921 to 1967, Part I: 1921 to 1945. Genealogy 55th year (2006) 1–14.
  8. Alexandra Przyrembel: "Rassenschande" ... ISBN 3-525-35188-7 , p. 108f.
  9. Doc. VEJ 4/168 in: Klaus-Peter Friedrich (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 4: Poland - September 1939-July 1941 , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58525-4 , p. 393.
  10. Thomas Fricke: Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Department Main State Archive Stuttgart - Finding aid J 386: Films from civil status registers of Jewish communities in Württ. In: www2.landesarchiv-bw.de. Retrieved October 16, 2019 .
  11. 170 employees according to the Encyclopedia of National Socialism, ISBN 3-423-33007-4 , p. 694 / Schulle, p. 168, deducts those drafted for military service.