To facilitate and legalize antisemitism, Nazi Germany’s 1935 Nuremberg Laws classified people with four German grandparents as “German or kindred blood,” while those with three or four Jewish grandparents were classified as Jews. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of “mixed blood.” Marriage, even sexual intercourse, was forbidden between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. The laws also stripped German Jews of their citizenship and forbid their employment, education, and participation in civic and social life. To some extent, the Nuremberg laws were an attempt to return 20th century Germany Jews to the status they held before their 19th century emancipation. Read more about Nazi Germany in the lead-up to WWII in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).
