Johann von Leers: ‘The legal regulation of the Jewish Question’ (1933)

Translated by Alexander Jacob

Johann von Leers (1902–1965) was a National Socialist party member from 1929 and was invited by Goebbels in 1933 to work in the Propaganda Ministry, where he produced several books and booklets until 1945. These works included a study of the Weimar Republic,  14 Jahre Judenrepublik: Die Geschichte eines Rassenkampfes  (14 Years of the Jewish Republic: The History of a Racial Struggle, 1933) and Oswald Spenglers Weltpolitische System und der Nationalsozialismus (1934),[1] as well as books on National Socialism, Adolf Hitler (1933), Entwicklung des Nationalsozialismus von seinem Anfang bis zur Gegenwart (The development of National Socialism from its beginning to the present,1936) and on Jewry, Judentum und Gaunertum (Jewry and the Underworld, 1940), Juden hinter Stalin (Jews behind Stalin, 1941), Die Verbrechernatur der Juden (The criminal nature of the Jews,1944), etc.

14 Jahre Judenrepublik: Die Geschichte eines Rassenkampfes, in two volumes, was one of the first works that Leers wrote while at the Propaganda Ministry. The first volume of Leers’ account of the Jewish Weimar Republic begins with a contrast of the racial ethos of the Indo-Europeans with that of the Semitic Jews. It continues with an account of the rise to power in Germany of the Jewish Marxists. The second volume contains a more detailed record of the corrupt course of the Weimar government from 1919 to 1932. This is followed by the present chapter explaining the laws adopted against Jewry in 1933 by the National Socialist Reich and further chapters outlining the new state structure instituted by the National Socialists and Leers’ counsel to Jewry to cultivate a state of their own instead of exploiting other nations through their international networks.

After the war, Leers fled from Germany to Italy, where he lived for five years. In 1950, he emigrated to Argentina, where he edited a journal called Der Weg. Later, in 1956, Leers emigrated to Egypt accepting an invitation by Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian mufti who had been supportive of the Third Reich. Under al-Husseini’s influence Leers converted to Islam and called himself Omar Amin.[2] During the last years of his life Leers served as adviser to the Arab League and head of Nasser’s Israeli propaganda unit in Egypt.

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Leers’ explanations of the laws adopted in 1933 by the Reich reveal the considerable generosity of the Reich towards Jewry in the early years. Those Jews who had fought for the German Reich, in particular, were spared from the exclusions decreed by these laws. Later in 1933 Jews were barred from owning agricultural land or farming by the Hereditary Farm Law of  September 29, 1933. Shortly after, they were prohibited from joining the Reich Chamber of Culture, and were thus banned from artistic, musical, literary and theatrical activity. The Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 then deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited sexual contact between Jews and Germans. In 1936 and 1937 Jews were excluded from all academic and public positions. In April 1938 Jewish assets and businesses were confiscated and ‘Aryanised’. In 1938, shortly after the Anschluss, Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of the Viennese office for expediting Jewish emigration out of the Reich, and he continued these procedures in Prague and Berlin until 1941 — when all Jewish emigration was stopped.[3]

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The Laws Adopted against Jewry in 1933 by the National Socialist Reich

After the National Socialist victory, the legal status of the Jews in Germany also had necessarily to be changed. The positions of political power in the administration that the Jews, as the bearers of the Weimar state, had acquired could no longer be left to them and the overrepresentation of the academic professions by Jews — demonstrated in the statistics attached to this book[4] —  could no longer be tolerated, especially since a great part of Jewish doctors and dentists had been in every way preferred by the health insurance systems under Social Democratic directorship. Furthermore, the intolerable proliferation of eastern Jewry in Germany had, in particular, to be stopped. In most cases it was possible to expel the eastern Jews who were living in the country without permits or with expired permits.[5] Many thousands of other eastern Jews, who were personally unreliable, were at first forbidden to do business so that, quite apart from the eastern Jews guilty of numerous crimes and treated all too gently by the old system who could now be imprisoned, quite generally a movement outwards of these harmful and therefore undesirable elements ensued. It was much more difficult in such cases where it was not a question of stateless Jews or those wrongly granted German citizenship by the previous governments but of Jews of Polish, Romanian or Hungarian citizenship. Here, unfortunately, any undertaking was impossible since it was forbidden by international conventions. The statistics attached show how numerous these —  in so many ways —  morally inferior Jews of foreign citizenship are in Berlin alone, where they proliferated to the detriment of the German inhabitants in a really intrusive manner.

The Marxist Jews, who were in the directorship of the press or of the defeated Marxist parties, and in addition the repulsive ‘intelligentsia’ with long hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and blue shaved cheeks that frequented the Berlin Communist cafés and had, from there, railed for years against everything that is German, fled abroad like a swarm of sparrows that had been driven off, in order to continue their ranting from there. Unfortunately, these refugees could not for the most part be caught since, at first, the concerned positions in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior were not yet in the hands of a ‘sharp coachman’ but of a weak German nationalist deputy. In this way both the newspaper Jews Theodor Wolff,[6] Alfred Kerr[7] and Georg Bernhard[8] and the nasty Tucholsky[9] and the Jewish agitator Toller[10] were able to escape abroad. It is also quite particularly lamentable that Bernhard Weiß,[11] the diabolical tormentor of imprisoned SA men in Berlin, was able to flee. If the revenge of the rage of the people had been justified in any case it was in the case of this wicked sadist.

But those who could still be caught in Germany have been, and one tries to conduct them towards useful work even though they may seem incapable of improvement.

At the same time, obviously, all Marxist officials, and among them also Marxist Jews, have been removed from political and communal service, all Marxist teachers from teaching positions, and all Marxist students from the universities and high schools.[12] For the general regulation of the positions of Jews in the bureaucracy —  following the stipulations of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933 (Reich Legal Gazette I, p.175) and the three implementation decrees of 11 April, 4 May and 6 May (Reich Legal Gazette I, pp.195, 233, 245) —  the following conditions were essentially established that have been supplemented by a ‘Law Amending Regulations in the Area of ​​General Civil Service, Salary, and Pension Law’ of 30 June 1933:

Officials of non-Aryan origin are to be retired, but not such non-Aryan officials who have been regular officials since 1 August 1914. Those could be considered regular officials who, according to the evaluation of the authorities, have, since 1 August 1914, fulfilled all the preconditions for the acquisition of their first regular position, have successfully finished the last required test for this, and also worked in an outstanding manner during their official career.

Further, those non-Aryan officials are not to be retired who fought during the world war on the front for the German Reich or its allies. Here one is considered a front solider who in the world war took part along with the fighting troops in a battle, combat, static battle, or a siege. Here, consequently, those are not considered who, without facing the enemy, remained during the war for service in the war zone, that is, the people in comfortable positions remain unconsidered whereas everyone who was at the front, according to the registrations in the war muster, is considered a front soldier.

This condition has been interpreted on many occasions by Jews as something humiliating as if the Jews who participated in the war went to the battlefield only for the sake of certain advantages and in order to remain bureaucrats later whereas they too wished only to defend the country. This interpretation is erroneous. The regulation in favour of front soldiers takes into account the debt of gratitude that the German nation has towards all those who bore arms and stood at the front for the defence of Germany. In view of this moral obligation of the German nation — which is sacred to it — the principle of the clear separation of Jews from the bureaucracy has also appeared. The experience of the world war is so significant for the German nation that such an exception on account of respect for a comrade who stood in the same uniform at the front seemed compulsory and necessary.

Further, those non-Aryan officials are not retired whose fathers or sons fell in the war. This condition arises from the same reason as the maintenance of Jewish front soldiers in their official positions.

The Central Verein Zeitung (organ of the central association of German citizens of Jewish faith) observes about this law: ‘Jewish war widows who have become professionals (for example, teachers, social welfare workers, etc.) must therefore be retired if the legislator does not exert special consideration in these cases’ (CV Zeitung, 11 May 1933). Here one can safely agree for reasons of justice that Jewish war widows who have in their husbands sacrificed that which they loved most in this world are treated the same way as Jewish front soldiers, thus may remain in their professional positions. A regulation of the legislation in this sense would be harmless and is to be heartily recommended.

On the other hand, there is, regarding such Aryan officials who have on many occasions married Jews for the really worthless motive of money or of relations to the Weimar state, only Art.4, which provides for retirement due to ‘political unreliability’ on the basis of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, a definite leverage point. Here perhaps a preliminary evaluation that justifies the retirement of such officials would be a necessary recommendation.

On the basis of the Law Amending Regulations in the Area of ​​General Civil Service, Salary, and Pension Law of 30 June 1933 (Reich Legal Gazette I, p.433), for the new appointment of officials it is established fundamentally that one who is of non-Aryan origin or has married a person of non-Aryan origin cannot be appointed as a Reich official. Reich officials of Aryan origin who enter into marriage with a person of non-Aryan origin are to be dismissed.

Therewith the state administration is fully reacquired by Germans, especially since the same provisions are valid for the civil service law of the provinces, communities, communal associations and other foundations, institutions and corporations of the public law. In this way an idea of Bismarck’s is realized that he expressed in the united state parliament on 15 June 1847:

If, as the representative of the sacred majesty of the King, I think of a Jew whom I should obey, I must confess that I would feel deeply humiliated and oppressed so that the joy and the righteous sense of honour with which I am now concerned to fulfil my duties with regard to the state would abandon me. I share this feeling with the mass of the lower strata of the population and am not ashamed of their company.

The German state in all its branches is an Aryan racial state; it could perhaps include non-German but Aryan racial groups originating from the same Nordic source but can, after its transformation from a liberal state of citizens into an Aryan racial state, no longer make any Jews officials. Thus there lies no unreasonable harshness against Jewry in the total exclusion of any new appointment of Jewish officials but only a consequence of the concept of the state realized by National Socialism.

The regulation of the legal relations of the employees and workers of the public authorities has been ordered in a way similar to the regulation of the legal  relations of the non-Aryan officials. Even here the front soldiers and those non-Aryans whose fathers or sons have fallen in the world war remain in service. Furthermore, in the case of economic enterprises, exceptions can be made when urgent reasons are present. The remaining contracts with non-Aryans are cancelled whereby the existing salaries will be paid to the non-Aryans for three more months. In addition, they will receive three-fourths of the other actionable payments which include, naturally, work income from service-, factory-, or company-contracts.

In the case of lawyers (in Berlin more than 50% Jewish!), likewise, the front soldiers and also those who have lost fathers or sons in the battlefield and those permitted until 1 August 1914 remain permitted. The others lose their powers of representation. Besides, office partnership, and partnership with these excluded lawyers, is forbidden to non-Aryan lawyers.

Important here is again the regulation of the youth, that is, the fact that in the universities it is determined through the Law against overrepresentation in German universities and high schools of 25 April 1933 (Reich Legal Gazette, pp.225,226) that new admissions can include non-Aryans to the limit of only 1.5% of the totality of attendees in every school and for the non-Aryans already in university or high school a numerus clausus[13] of 5 percent is set. The following are not counted as non-Aryans and are also not considered in the calculation of allotments and ratios: ‘Reich Germans of non-Aryan origin whose fathers have fought in the world war at the front for the German Reich or its allies as well as children from marriages that were entered into before this law came into effect if one parent or two grandparents are of Aryan origin. They also remain out of consideration in the calculation of allotments and ratios.’

Therewith even children of Jewish parents, even when both parents are Jewish but not both grandparents, are not to be considered non-Aryans according to this law. This very accommodating regulation — which practically almost overrules the racial principle — has been made, once again, with consideration for the Jews who have been long resident in the country.

In the case of doctors, to whom private practice is generally permitted, an exclusion of Jewish doctors is decreed only for government doctors (Decree of the Reich Labour Minister of 24 April 1933). Only those non-Aryans remain permitted as government doctors who were permitted already before 1 August 1914 or those who have fought at the front in the world war for the German Reich or for its allies or have been active as doctors at the front or in a military hospital at the front. Regarding service as doctors at the front, one will doubtless have to reckon also service in field hospitals and other medical establishments as service at the front where danger through enemy weapons was present but not service in non-dangerous staging hospitals or domestic military hospitals where are present only the customary dangers of the medical profession.

The basic features of the legal concept developed in this legislation, namely, to exclude Jews in general from political and semi-political institutions, while, on the other hand, to protect from exclusion such Jews who were either front soldiers or licensed or were active in their profession before 1 August 1914, or who lost fathers or sons on the battlefield, can be seen as the basic principle of the Jewish legislation in the area of political and semi-political institutions. De lege ferenda,[14] one may also reasonably suggest the same treatment as in the case of those who have lost fathers or sons on the battlefield for Jewish war widows who have lost their husbands on the battlefield.

In the field of scientific education, the law regarding the numerus clausus (Law against the overrepresentation in German universities and high schools) provides a regulation that can be used generally.

The relations are much more difficult in the economic field. Here one thing must be considered: the German state has become an Aryan state. Its basic principle was always German and the acceptance of Jews into its administrative body only a consequence of the erroneous acceptance of Liberalism and the equalization of Germans and Jews as state citizens conditioned by that.

The economic order — if one may indeed talk of one — that National Socialism has taken over is a capitalistic one. Its intellectual source in the Jewish mind and the ghetto of the Middle Ages has been demonstrated here. It has — until a totally National Socialist order supersedes it — been manipulated with the same skill by non-Jews as by Jews. As an economic method it can be wielded by any nation. One therefore does not change anything in it when one merely replaces Jewish bearers of the same with German ones. In the transformation of the position of Jews in this economy it can therefore be a question only of placing certain economic positions important for life under reliable National Socialist leadership but not of replacing ‘black Jews’ with ‘white Jews’, such as misinterpretation motivated by competitive interests would like. In the economy, economic capacity as such should be valid. Thus the Jewish economist, so long as he does not act in a hostile way towards the state or does not finance activity hostile to the state, is to be tolerated. That the National Socialist press does not yield to advertising for Jewish enterprises follows from historical experience and the orientation of the National Socialist movement. But attempts to exclude small Jewish businessmen, the self-employed and such are senseless from the standpoint of wise political considerations. They do not change anything in the real situation and are mostly only pointless severities.

In this question two points of view are to be ascertained. The state is a National Socialist state in which new Jewish immigrants are not tolerated. That is why no new Jewish officials are appointed. In this question steadfast adherence to the principle is ordered.

In the economy, only the ‘senior leaders’  have been brought, or are still being brought, under National Socialist control. A replacement of bearers of the capitalistic mentality of Jewish origin by bearers of the same mentality of non-Jewish origin is essentially absurd. Quite generally the economic activity that is not harmful to the state is not to be kept from Jewry. Since an expulsion of Jews settled for long in Germany, who also in many cases feel historically bound to this country, cannot be considered in practical terms, there is no reason to deprive them of means of subsistence.

On the other hand, with the defeat of the Marxist parties and the fleeing of their Marxist leaders and intelligentsia as well as with the expulsion of a great part of the immigrant eastern Jews, the most unpleasant part of Jewry has been rendered harmless, as it were.

As an old anti-Semite one will not come under the suspicion of a sudden ardent philo-Semitism if one expresses the truism that the Jewish small businessman Rosenbaum or Aron, that the old medical consultant Lewi, that the small Jewish family in some German city have also felt, and still feel, from the separation that has become necessary of Germans from Jews, in many cases, severe emotional suffering that does not serve the new political transformation in any way. The regulation of the Jewish Question has been legally enforced by the highest Führer and will be implemented further where it is still necessary, and the education of the German people about the ‘Hyksos[15] leadership’ that we have overcome has been realized so generally that any attempts of any sort for the renewal of a Jewish rule will meet among the people themselves the most robust resistance (this book too serves the purpose of this education). But it would be pointless and petty to treat the remaining Jews, in personal intercourse, with particular hostility or injurious hatred. That they themselves have acted in this way towards National Socialism is no reason that, after the victory, we as individuals should adopt their methods. The defeated enemy must certainly be prevented to set himself on the offensive once again but to deride him and to wound quite insignificant Jews personally for political purposes would not be commensurate with the greatness of the victory that has been won. Petty resentment, petty hatreds of individuals only smear the image of the great historical racial debate, they are not only harmful but also stupid.

The position of the Jews in Germany can best be compared to the position of the ‘metoikos’[16] in ancient Athens. They have civil rights but absolutely no rights to participation in the conduct of the state (excluding the exceptions for front soldiers, etc.). So long as there is no possibility of a widespread resettlement of Jewry in their own homeland as an international solution to the Jewish problem, a solution that does not come into question for the old Jewish generation in Germany, there is no reason to harass them uselessly in their metoikos position. That is true especially for those Germans who, after the strenuously fought victory of the National Socialist movement, think of bestowing on themselves the reputation of ‘old fighters’[17] through extreme harshness in the matter of the Jewish Question. These people do not see the international significance of the battle of the two races; often they would merely like to do Mr. Cohn’s business themselves! But we did not make the revolution for such people!

Much more important is the task of enabling the German nation in all its life-forms to find its path to its fine instincts in its own way after it had, through its own bad and inferior instincts, sunk so low that it ended up under Jewish leadership. Only when these bad and wicked German instincts – envy, avarice, lack of faith in one’s own worth, the disgraceful lack of ‘civil courage’ – have been overcome would the infiltration of a foreign mentality be eliminated. That the petty businessman Rosenbaum still sells hosiery or is otherwise economically occupied does not improve or worsen anything in this matter. The National Socialist party programme therefore demands also that we fight not only the Jews amongst us but especially the Jewish mentality within us. This is where the great ‘reconstruction of Germany’ under Adolf Hitler has started. But the worst example of a foreign mentality among Germans we find represented quite equally in the Marxist and in the capitalistic mentality. And this mentality continues to exist today in a great part of our people.

[1] See my English edition, Oswald Spengler’s Geopolitical system and National Socialism, Virtus Editions, 2025.

[2] See also my translation of Leers’ article ‘Judaism and Islam as opposites’ (1942) in the Occidental Observer, Sep. 24, 2024.

[3] See my editions of Adolf Eichmann’s Argentine and Jerusalem memoirs, The Eichmann Tapes: My Role in the Final Solution, Black House Publishing, 2015, and False Gods: The Jerusalem Memoirs, Black House Publishing, 2015.

[4] The last seven sections of the second volume of 14 Jahre provide statistics related to Jews in various professions in Germany as well as a catalogue of Socialist Jews in the country.

[5] In July 1933, the Denaturalisation Law (Gesetz über den Widerruf von Einbürgerungen und die Aberkennung der deutschen Staatsangehörigkeit) revoked the citizenship of ‘naturalised’ Jews and undesirables. (In the same month was passed the ‘Law for the prevention of offspring with hereditary diseases’ that decreed the sterilization of parents bearing such hereditarily diseases.)

[6] Theodor Wolff (1868-1943) was an influential Jewish journalist who edited the Berliner Tageblatt from 1906 to 1933.

[7] Alfred Kerr (1867-1948) was a Jewish theatre critic and essayist.

[8] Georg Bernhard (1875-1944) was a Jewish journalist who worked in editorial positions at the Berliner Zeitung and the Vossische Zeitung.

[9] Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935) was a Jewish satirist whose articles in the theatre magazine Die Weltbühne made him a notable figure in the culture of the Weimar Republic.

[10] Ernst Toller (1893-1939) was a Jewish expressionist playwright who served in 1919 as president of the short-lived Bavarian Socialist Republic and head of its army.

[11] Bernhard Weiß (1880-1951) was vice-president of the Berlin police during the Weimar Republic. Cf. my translation of “Joseph Goebbels’ Battle for Berlin: The Beginning (1934)” in the Occidental Observer, June 12, 2022.

[12] See below.

[13] quota

[14] (Lt.) ‘Regarding future legislation’

[15] The Hyksos were foreign rulers of Egypt in the Fifteenth Dynasty (ca.1600 B.C.). They were of Levantine origin.

[16] A metoikos, or metic, in ancient Greece, was a citizen of a polis other than Athens who was granted residency in Athens but no political rights.

[17] One who had joined the National Socialist party during its early years and fought for its eventual success in 1933.