"Non-Germans" Under the Third Reich (24 page)

This may have been particularly true of the number of non-Aryan civil servants in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, whether because this old, established administration in any case looked upon the admission of Jews with skepticism (except perhaps where baptized Jews were concerned) or because the tradition among non-Aryans generally led them to choose other careers (attorney, etc.).
⁵¹
Finally, to whatever extent Jewish civil servants may have worked in the Reich Ministry of the Interior (and, analogously, in the interior ministries of the
Länder
), it may be realistically presumed that most of them fell under the provision excepting frontline soldiers (sec. 3, par. 2, Professional Civil Service Code). For, since the majority of civil servants were not appointed to the prestigious and long-established Reich Ministry of the Interior until their middle or later years, they had either already been civil servants as of the cutoff date of August 1, 1914, or belonged in any case to the group of “frontline soldiers,” the definition of which, moreover, was quite broadly worded.
⁵²

Finally, the thesis that the number of cases that fell under section 3 of the Professional Civil Service Code was probably quite small is supported by statistics from the Reich Ministry of the Interior on the changes undertaken in personnel matters under the code up to the end of 1933. Listed for the senior service are a mere five cases under section 4 (dismissal on political grounds), six cases under section 5 (transfer for official reasons), one case under section 6 (retirement for official reasons), and three temporary retirements under section 25 of the Reich Civil Service Code
⁵³
—but not a single case under section 3 of the Professional Civil Service Code.

More precise statistics are available for the area of judicial administration. The official information provided by civil servants in the Reich Ministry of Justice contains comprehensive tables, broken down according to appellate court districts, regarding Jewish judges and state prosecutors (“Jews by race”) eliminated under section 3 of the Professional Civil Service Code. According to these, by April 30, 1934, a total of 574 judges and state prosecutors had been retired by reason of the Aryan Paragraph.
⁵⁴
This was engineered so that, at least in Prussia, the affected persons, to the extent that they were permitted to continue in office as “frontline soldiers,” were initially transferred from the big cities to other appellate court districts
⁵⁵
before being finally retired there, too, on the authority of the Nuremberg Laws of September 15, 1935 (by official count a total of 239 civil servants).
⁵⁶
Broken down by
Land
or district, the picture is as follows.

In Prussia, according to the statistics of the Prussian ministry of justice,
⁵⁷
there were 1,704 non-Aryans among the 41,302 judicial civil servants (including junior attorneys) in office on April 7, 1933 (i.e., 4.1%) (the proportion of non-Aryans in the senior judicial service was 7.6%). Of these, 1,114 civil servants (2.7% of all civil servants, 65.4% of the non-Aryan officials) were eliminated, whereas 331 civil servants (19.4% of the non-Aryan civil servants) remained in office by virtue of the exceptions granted in section 3, paragraph 2, of the Professional Civil Service Code.

Also available are isolated statistics from the appellate court districts. According to these, roughly 15 of the 571 career senior justice officials in the appellate court district of Cologne (2.6%) were of Jewish descent; of these, 9 were pensioned off and 6 remained in office temporarily under the exception granted to frontline soldiers by section 3.
⁵⁸
In Hamburg, 31 non-Aryan judges and state prosecutors were retired, and 12 others were allowed to remain in office in subordinate positions under section 3, paragraph 2, Professional Civil Service Code.
⁵⁹
Overall, by September 1933, 95 of the 280 judges and state prosecutors in Hamburg had been eliminated from office.
⁶⁰
In the appellate court district of Hamm in 1933, 18 judges of Jewish descent were compelled to retire under the Professional Civil Service Code; another 13 Jewish judges remaining in office by virtue of the exceptions granted under section 3, paragraph 2, were eliminated after 1935 on the basis of the Reich Citizenship Law and its implementing regulations. Six judges were subjected to professional discrimination (denial of promotion, transfer to lesser offices, etc.) because they were married to Jewish women.
⁶¹

Finally, if one surveys the entire field of reasons for dismissal under the Professional Civil Service Code, it would seem entirely justified to conclude that in the judiciary, the forced retirement of non-Aryan civil servants under section 3, paragraph 1, was implemented to the fullest extent, whereas, given the “vigorous [political] restraint” exercised by Reich Minister of Justice Gürtner
⁶²
and the attitude, quite conservative in any case, of justice officials themselves, dismissals for political reasons under section 4 were in all probability not very numerous, with the exception of the first radical measures taken in early 1933.
⁶³
Rather, in the cases of troublesome judges and state prosecutors, the preferred method was to make use of other means of neutralization—retirement or transfer to a lesser office—under sections 5 and 6 of the Professional Civil Service Code. This can be seen with particular clarity in the statistics from Prussia, according to which the number of retirements and transfers under sections 5 and 6 was several times that of dismissals under section 4.
⁶⁴

2. The German Civil Service Code, January 26, 1937

The special legal treatment reserved for Jewish civil servants, who beginning in 1935 included both the so-called full Jews and the “persons of mixed descent of the first degree,”
⁶⁵
was, however, not an isolated program that came to an end with the expiration of the Professional Civil Service Code. Rather, it was a process that took place in various stages,
⁶⁶
all of them culminating in the German Civil Service Code of January 26, 1937.
⁶⁷

Prior to this, the Reich Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935,
⁶⁸
which was in force in all territories incorporated into the German Reich,
⁶⁹
determined that Jews might not hold public office; all Jewish civil servants who were permitted to remain in office for a time by virtue of the exceptions granted in section 3, paragraph 2, of the Professional Civil Service Code (those with long-standing service records and those who had been frontline soldiers), as well as all other persons of Jewish descent employed in public service, were thus eliminated on November 15, 1935, by means of forced retirement mandated by law no later than December 31, 1935 (sec. 4, pars. 1 and 2, of the First Decree to the Reich Citizenship Law, dated November 14, 1935).
⁷⁰
In the Reich judicial administration alone, this affected 239 judges and state prosecutors.
⁷¹

The pensions of retired Jewish civil servants were cut, in violation of every principle of the “well-earned rights” of civil servants (art. 129, par. 1, of the Weimar Constitution).
⁷²
Jewish civil servants who were dismissed or forced to retire on political grounds received no monetary support (pension) from public funds whatsoever, unless they had served for more than ten years (sec. 8 of the Professional Civil Service Code). The size of the pensions granted differed as well. Among the Jewish civil servants whom the law forced into retirement, only those who had served as frontline soldiers received, until they reached the legal age limit, pensions equal to their full previous salaries; and even so they did not receive the usual advancement in degree of seniority. Others entitled to benefits and with more than ten years of service received reduced amounts. As early as 1938, however, the pensions of all (up to then) “privileged” Jewish civil servants who had legitimate claim to them were further reduced at the instigation of the Party leadership.
⁷³
Even harsher regulations were introduced for Jewish employees, who (in contrast to civil servants) were not tenured and could be dismissed from public service according to “simple” labor law. Even if they had been frontline soldiers, they did not enjoy “these privileges”;
⁷⁴
that is, they were deprived of all benefits. Beginning in 1935, all former Jewish civil servants (those who had undergone compulsory retirement) who had no legitimate claim to pensions under the Professional Civil Service Code were granted, in cases of “worthiness” and “indigence,” a “maintenance subsidy,” cancelable at any time; of course this was not an adequate compensation.
⁷⁵

The final regulation in this matter was provided by the German Civil Service Code of January 26, 1937,
⁷⁶
which replaced both the Reich Civil Service Code of 1873 and the Professional Civil Service Code of April 7, 1933. Although it adopted, to a great extent, the principles embodied in the Reich Civil Service Code, it nonetheless contained numerous political provisions and regulations on race law that in effect annulled those same principles.
⁷⁷
The result was that all Civil Service positions were put on a new legal footing,
⁷⁸
in total disregard of conflicting provisions under the Weimar Constitution.
⁷⁹
From now on, only persons of “German or related blood” (sec. 25), who were citizens of the Reich as set forth under the Reich Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935, could become civil servants if they met the career requirements and were in a position to “ensure” that they would “at all times and without reserve act on behalf of the National Socialist state” (sec. 26).

Ever since the changes made in the Reich Civil Service Code by the law of June 30, 1933, which was also in force for the
Länder
and the municipalities,
⁸⁰
non-Aryan persons could no longer be appointed to public service, either as Reich civil servants, employees, or laborers.
⁸¹
Therefore, proof of ancestry was an essential part of any application for admission to public service.
⁸²
Beginning in April 1933 in Prussia, non-Aryans were not permitted to be Civil Service probationers, and after June 1, 1933, they were no longer admitted to the first or second state law examinations. Beginning in 1934, when jurisdiction was transferred to the Reich,
⁸³
anyone in the entire Reich territory registering for the first state law examination had to furnish in advance a “certificate of Aryan descent” (showing four Aryan grandparents for the applicant as well as for his wife or fiancée);
⁸⁴
otherwise he was excluded from taking the examinations.

A further requirement was introduced in that the spouse of the candidate also had to be of “Aryan descent,” because according to the “theory of the
völkisch
community,” the racial idea also extended to the family of the civil servant or applicant.
⁸⁵

The regulations governing dismissal on racial grounds, which were placed inconspicuously in the section entitled “Termination of Civil Service Status” (sec. 59, par. 1, subpar. 2c),
⁸⁶
although they adopted the basic idea of the Aryan Paragraph of the Professional Civil Service Code of April 7, 1933, were pertinent only in those cases in which civil servants were at first mistakenly classified as Aryans, since all other Jewish civil servants had by law been eliminated by December 31, 1935. A novelty, however, was that marriage to a person of Jewish descent was now also grounds for dismissal (sec. 59, par. 1, German Civil Service Code). Persons to be dismissed under section 59 of the code forfeited (in contrast to earlier provisions) all legitimate claim to pension benefits;
⁸⁷
only when there was no fault of the civil servant did the law provide, as a special act of charity, that he “merely” be forced to retire with pension benefits (sec. 72, par. 1, German Civil Service Code).
⁸⁸

Politically unreliable civil servants and persons of equivalent status (notaries, etc.) who were no longer in a position to “ensure” that they would “at all times act on behalf of the National Socialist state,” could not, by contrast, simply be dismissed (and were to that extent treated more mildly than those subject to the German Civil Service Code). Rather, at the request of their administrative superiors, and with the consent of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, they could be forced to retire permanently or temporarily (sec. 71, German Civil Service Code); this granted the administration considerably more discretionary latitude in deciding the subsequent fate of civil servants than had earlier been the case. Moreover, all civil servants were now de facto frankly declared to be the executor of the will of the NSDAP (sec. 1, par. 2, and sec. 3, par. 2, German Civil Service Code),
⁸⁹
and the principle of political neutrality in the career Civil Service was thereby set aside. A civil servant showed a poor National Socialist attitude by, for instance, maintaining relations with Jews,
⁹⁰
“refus[ing] to give the German greeting (‘Heil Hitler’),” or making critical statements about the Führer or about the treatment of the Jews.
⁹¹
Be that as it may, there was relatively little use made of compulsory retirement under section 71 of the German Civil Service Code,
⁹²
since the political and racial purges of the Civil Service had already taken place; furthermore, the preferred method of disposing of politically troublesome civil servants, particularly in cases involving highly qualified specialists, was to transfer them rather than to pension them off,
⁹³
the more so because the opportunities for transfer increased greatly during the war years.
⁹⁴