You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search. Many writers have noted both the deliberately unsystematic manner in which anti-Jewish measures were introduced and applied by the Nazisβeven as the process as a whole proceeded relentlesslyβand the relative slowness of most German Jews to respond to them and grasp their full significance. It was not completely nonsensical to associate the hooliganism of the Nazi street gangs with the Hep Hep riots of βor with similar events in the late s and early s or with the Scheunenviertel riot in Berlin as recently as βall of which, after all, had passed.
A significant faction at the Interior Ministry aimed to exclude Mischlinge from the strictures applied to Jews by distinguishing them carefully from individuals defined as Jews. It suffices if one of the four grandparents is non-Aryan. In other words, they feel defamed and forcibly deprived of their German national identity [ deutsches Volkstum ], even though they feel they belong exclusively to the German nation.
This affects them emotionally more than full Jews, especially since most Mischlinge are, unfortunately, found in families whose members are in the military officer corps or have a high number of university degrees.
Given their current scope, the Aryan provisions will also remove from the national community [ Volksgemeinschaft ] descendants of men who have rendered great service to German science or to the renewal of Germany. His mother, from the Jewish banking family of Behrens, converted only at the time of her marriage to his father. Though he had to give up some highly visible positions and, in general, live a prudently secluded life, Petersen, despite being classified a Mischling of the first degree, kept his company running under Nazi rule and in , as a notable local businessman untainted by Nazi associations, was appointed the first post-war mayor of Hamburg by the British occupation authorities.
I did not discern the danger lurking in Nazidom or foresee how it would subsequently develop. In particular, I did not take the Jewish question too seriously. I understood it when my brother had to resign as mayor in Being deprived of my civil rights was extremely painful to me. Yet I did not suffer any interference in the firm and, even during the Nazi period, we were able to carry on the business.
