Volkmar Weiss

German Genealogy in Its Social and Political Context Volkmar Weiss

In 1933, Hitler's coalition government enacted the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" and the "Reich Law against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities", both laws aimed at the professional exclusion of Jews. Mentally, these laws had been prepared for decades. The book shows how anti-Semitism first and foremost affected academic youth. The associations of German genealogists kept their distance from anti-Semitic endeavors until 1932, with the exception of the "German Roland". However, the proof of ancestry required by the state from 1933 onwards brought a unique boost in employment for the genealogists and a growing interest in family history. By the example of the associations "Roland" (Dresden) a complex picture of mental resistance or factual work up to the miserable hanger-on is drawn from the sources. With consequences reaching far beyond the year 1945.