The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (in German: Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums or short: Berufsbeamtengesetz), also known as Civil Service Law, Civil Service Restoration Act, and Law to Re-establish the Civil Service, was a law passed by the National Socialist regime on April 7 1933, two months after Adolf Hitler attained power.

This law re-established a "national" civil service and allowed tenured civil servants to be dismissed. Further, civil servants who were not of "Aryan descent" (i.e. Jews, as defined by the Nazis), as well as opponents of the Nazi regime ("Civil servants whose previous political activities afford no assurance that they will at all times give their fullest support to the national State") were forced to retire from the civil service. This meant that Jews and political opponents could not serve as teachers, professors, judges, or other government positions. Shortly after, a similar law was passed concerning lawyers, doctors, tax consultants, and notaries.

As the law was first drafted by the Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, all those of "non-Aryan descent" were to be fired immediately at the Reich, Lander and municipal levels of government. However, when the bill for the law was presented to the President of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg on April 1, 1933, he refused to sign the bill until it had amended to exclude all Jewish civil servants who were World War I veterans, had served in the civil service in the war or whose fathers were veterans. Hitler agreed to these amendments and the bill was signed into law on April 7, 1933. In practice, the amendments excluded most Jewish civil servants and not until after Hindenburg?s death in 1934, were the amendments disallowed. Nonetheless, the passage of the ?Law for a Restoration of a Professional Civil Service? in 1933 was a crucial turning point in the history of German Jewry for this law marked the first time since the last of the German Jews had been emancipated in 1871 that an anti-Semitic law had been passed in Germany.

Related Ordinances

• 11 April 1933 – First Ordinance on the Implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service^[1]

• 25 April 1933 – Law against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities^[2]

• 6 May 1933 – Third Ordinance on the Implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service^[3]

• 21 January 1935 – Law on the Retirement and Transfer of Professors as a Result of the Reorganization of the German System of Higher Education^[4]

See also

• Racial policy of Nazi Germany

References

• Bauer, Yehuda: A History Of The Holocaust. New York: F. Watts, 1982. ISBN 0-531-09862-1.
• Friedländer, Saul: Nazi Germany and the Jews Volume 1. The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939. New York: HarperCollins, 1997 ISBN 0-06-019042-6.
• Hentschel, Klaus, editor and Ann M. Hentschel, editorial assistant and Translator: Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources. Birkhäuser: Basel, Berlin, Boston, 1996. ISBN 0-8176-5312-0.

External links

• Robertson, Struan. "The Jewish Community in Hamburg 1860-1943". Retrieved September 25, 2005.
• Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, April 7, 1933 in English
• German original of the text
• Berufsbeamtengesetz from German-language Wikipedia. Retrieved September 25, 2005.

Notes

de:Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums