Soon after the passage of the
Enabling Act of 1933, the Nazi government promulgated several
antisemitic statutes, including the
Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service on 7 April 1933. Using this law, the regime aimed to dismiss—along with all politically-suspect persons such as social democrats, socialists, communists, and many liberals of all religions—all "non-Aryans" from all government positions in society, including public educators, and those practicing medicine in state hospitals. As a result, the term "non-Aryan" had to be defined in a way that was compatible with Nazi ideology. Under the "First Racial Definition" supplementary decree of 11 April, issued to clarify portions of the act passed four days prior, a "non-Aryan" (e.g., a Jew) was defined as one who had at least one Jewish parent or grandparent. Later, German citizens with only one Jewish grandparent were defined by the Nuremberg Laws as
Mischling of the second degree. Their employment restrictions remained, but they were permitted to marry non-Jewish and non-
Mischling Germans, and were not imprisoned. This distinction was not applied to non-German citizens. According to the philosophy of Nazi antisemitism, Jewry was considered a group of people bound by close, genetic (blood) ties who formed an
ethnic unit that one could neither join nor secede from. Early 20th-century books on
Nordicism such as
Madison Grant's
The Passing of the Great Race had a profound effect on Hitler's antisemitism. He was convinced that the Nordic Race/Culture constituted a superior branch of humanity, and viewed International Jewry as a parasitic and inferior race, determined to corrupt and exterminate both Nordic peoples and their culture through
Rassenschande ("racial pollution") and cultural corruption. Hitler declared that
Marxism was constructed by International Jewry, with the aim of Bolshevising the earth, ultimately allowing Jewry to dominate/exterminate the Aryan race. With this in mind, Hitler viewed Russia as a nation of
Untermenschen ("subhumans" or "Inferiors") dominated by their Judaic masters, which posed the gravest threat to both Germany and Europe as a whole. The Nazis defined Jewishness as partly genetic, but did not always use formal genetic tests or
physiognomic (facial) features to determine one's status (although the Nazis talked a lot about physiognomy as a racial characteristic). In practice, records concerning the religious affiliation(s) of one's grandparents were often the deciding factor (mostly christening records and membership registers of Jewish congregations).
Reclassification procedures Nonetheless, reclassification procedures of
Mischling were conducted within society. These requests for reclassification (e.g., Jew to
Mischling of 1st degree,
Mischling of 1st degree to 2nd degree, etc.) or
Aryanization (see
German Blood Certificate) were rarely given, as each had to be personally reviewed and concurred by
Adolf Hitler. Once approved by the Nazi party chancellery and Hitler, it was recognized throughout the Nazi community as an act of grace (
Gnadenakt). Other de facto reclassifications, lacking any official document, were privileges accorded by high-ranking Nazis to certain artists and other experts by way of special protection. The second way of reclassification was through a
declaratory judgment in court. Usually, the discriminated person took the action, questioning their descent from the Jewish-classified man until then regarded as their biological (grand)father.
Paternity suits aiming for reclassification () appeared mostly with deceased, divorced, or illegitimate (grand)fathers. They usually sought to change the discriminated litigant's status from Jewish-classified to
Mischling of first degree, or from
Mischling of first degree to second degree. The numbers of such suits soared whenever the Nazi government imposed new discriminations and persecutions (such as the Nuremberg Laws in 1935,
Kristallnacht in 1938, and the systematic
deportations of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent to concentration camps in 1941). The process was humiliating for the (grand)mothers who had to declare in court that they had committed adultery. The petitions were successful in the majority of cases. The high success rate recorded was a result of several factors. First, there was no risk in paternity suits since litigant classification cannot be downgraded. Consequently, lawyers were willing to represent litigants, though it was common practice to refuse hopeless cases. Some lawyers even specialized in this type of procedure. Second, usually, all the family members cooperated; including the sometimes still-living disputed (grand)father. Likely alternative fathers were often named, who either appeared themselves in court confirming their likely fatherhood, or who were already dead but were known as good friends, neighbors, or subtenants of the (grand)mother. Third, the obligatory and humiliating body examinations of those under suspicion were skewed by stereotypical Jewish perceptions. Expert witnesses would search for allegedly Jewish facial features, as conceived and understood by anti-Semites. If the doubted (grand)father was already dead, emigrated, or deported (as after 1941), the examination searched for these supposedly "Jewish" features in the physiognomy of the descendant (child). Since anti-Semitic clichés on Jewish outward appearance were so stereotyped, the average litigant did not show features clearly indicating their Jewish descent, so they often documented ambiguous results as medical evidence. Fourth, the judges tended to believe the accounts of the (grand)mothers, alternative fathers, doubted fathers, and other witnesses who had endured such public humiliation. They were not recorded for earlier perjuring, and judges would declare the prior paternity annulled, ensuring the status improvement for the litigant.
Standards of the Schutzstaffel (SS) The
Schutzstaffel (SS) used a more stringent standard. In order to join, a candidate had to prove (presumably through
baptismal records) that all direct ancestors born since 1750 were not Jewish, or they would have to apply for a
German Blood Certificate instead. When the stresses of World War II made it impracticable to confirm the ancestry of officer candidates, the extended proof of ancestry regulation was diminished to the standard laws requiring certified evidence of non-Judaism within two generations.
Jewish Mischlinge as Christian converts In the 19th century, many Jewish Germans converted to
Christianity; most of them becoming
Protestants rather than
Catholics. Two-thirds of the German population were Protestant until 1938, when the
Anschluss annexation of Austria to Germany added six million Catholics. The addition of 3.25 million Catholic Czechoslovaks of German ethnicity (
Sudeten Germans) increased the percentage of Roman Catholics in Greater Germany to 41% (approximately 32.5 million vs. 45.5 million Protestants or 57%) in a 1939 population estimated at 79 million. One percent of the population was Jewish. German converts from Judaism typically adopted whichever Christian denomination was most dominant in their community. Therefore, about 80% of the
Gentile Germans persecuted as Jews according to the Nuremberg Laws were affiliated with one of the 28 regionally-delineated Protestant church bodies. In 1933, approximately 77% of German Gentiles with Jewish ancestry were Protestant. In the 1939 census, however, the percentage dropped to 66%. This is due to the annexation of several areas in 1938, including Vienna and Prague, both of which have relatively large and well-established Catholic populations of Jewish descent. Converts to Christianity and their descendants had often married Christians with no recent Jewish ancestry. As a result, by the time the Nazis came to power, many Protestants and Roman Catholics in Germany had some traceable Jewish ancestry (usually traced back by the Nazi authorities for two generations), so that the majority of 1st- or 2nd-degree
Mischlinge were Protestant, yet many were Catholics. A considerable number of German Gentiles with Jewish ancestry were
irreligionists. Lutherans with Jewish ancestry were largely in northwestern and
northern Germany,
Evangelical Protestants of Jewish descent in
Central Germany (Berlin and its southwestern environs) and the
country's east. Catholics with Jewish ancestry lived mostly in Western and
Southern Germany,
Austria and what is now the
Czech Republic. ==
Mischlinge-founded organizations==