Denied a Certificate of Fitness to Marry: The Nuremberg Race Laws as a Threat to Black German Futures

Abstract

The 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws were one of the cornerstones of Nazi racial policy. Among other racial restrictions, they prohibited marriages and sexual relationships between German Jews and so-called Aryans. Wilhelm Frick, the Minister of the Interior, extended them to also cover men and women racialized as Black. The fact that this extension remains widely unknown is emblematic of the wider public and academic ignorance of Black experiences under the Nazis racial state. Using a wide range of new source materials, this article considers the application of the Race Laws, in word and spirit, as part of a more general assault on Germany’s Black residents, their children, and their white partners, which the Nazi regime undertook to protect German “racial purity.” In multiple localities, Nazi policing forces intervened in the private lives of Black residents, resorting to violence, in particular the very real threat of sterilization, to prevent the development of future generations of Black Germans.