Nuremberg Laws

About the Author

The authorship of the Nuremberg Laws is unclear. The names that are listed under the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor are not those of the authors but rather those of the officials over whose names the laws were promulgated. Generally, the actual authorship of the laws is attributed to two individuals, Hans Globke and Wilhelm Stuckart, although three other men—Bernhard Lösener, Franz Albrecht Medicus, and Julius Streicher—are often mentioned. The drafting of the laws, which took place in haste on September 14–15, 1935, was likely accomplished by committee.

Globke, born in Düsseldorf, Germany, was a lawyer and a jurist in Aachen, Germany. He is perhaps best known for drafting the emergency legislation that gave Hitler unlimited powers after he was appointed chancellor. Ironically, Globke was never a member of the Nazi Party because of his staunch Catholicism, so he was never affected by the de-Nazification program that followed World War II. He went on to a career as a jurist and a close aide to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in postwar West Germany.

Stuckart was a lawyer for the Nazi Party and was state secretary for the Interior Ministry. He was convicted of war crimes after World War II but was released from prison in 1949; a mitigating factor in his sentence was his effort to ensure that the Nuremberg Laws and other anti-Semitic laws were applied to as narrow a range of citizens as possible. Stuckart died following a car accident, but some people believe that he was, in effect, assassinated by Nazi hunters.

Lösener, born in Fürstenberg, Germany, was a lawyer and an Interior Ministry official who drafted anti-Semitic laws. In 1937 he and Globke coauthored a legal commentary on German racial laws. In 1942 Lösener was a participant in the Wannsee Conference, where the “Final Solution” for eliminating Jews was formulated.

Medicus was born in Strasbourg, Germany. After studying law, he became a member of the SS and then rose to the position of counselor in the Interior Ministry. He did not join the Nazi Party until 1937, after which he was the editor of the Reich Law Gazette. After the war he was a lawyer in the West German federal court system.

Streicher was a virulent anti-Semite and founder and editor of the anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer (literally “the Stormer,” often translated as “the Militant”). Streicher was convicted of war crimes and was hanged on October 16, 1946.