Einbürgern und Ausschliessen: die Nationalisierung der Staatsangehörigkeit vom Deutschen Bund bis zur Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Examines the development of German policy concerning naturalization and acquisition of German citizenship between 1860-1945. Pp. 369-420 discuss the Nazi period. With the rise of the Nazi regime, citizenship became a political issue. Nazi policy called for denaturalization of those who had acquired German citizenship between 1918-33, a measure aimed initially at the Ostjuden. The goal of Nazi ideology was to exclude Jews from German citizenship because "Jews were poisoning the body politic". Denaturalization had important economic and social consequences, since those affected became stateless. Unlike German Jews who already suffered at the time from increasing discrimination, Ostjuden were not even entitled to police protection. This was the first step of a process which gradually ensnared all those who were considered "fremdvölkisch" and eventually led to the exploitation and annihilation of European Jewry.