Reichstag

The Reichstag, Germany’s parliament, became the setting for a public display of Nazi authority at the 1935 rally in Nuremberg. On September 15, Adolf Hitler used its assembled members to introduce laws that stripped German Jews of citizenship and restricted their lives; the session made the parliament a stage for persecution presented as law.

Parliament as a Public Stage

The Nazi Party assembled the Reichstag in Nuremberg for the first time since 1543. The unusual location turned the passage of legislation into a public spectacle: the Reichstag was convened not only to enact laws but to display their enactment. At the rally’s climax, Adolf Hitler introduced three measures. One made the swastika the official flag of Germany; the other two would define the session’s lasting significance.

The Nuremberg Laws

The Reich Citizenship Law defined citizenship through descent and demonstrated loyalty to the German people and Reich. By excluding people not classified as having German or related blood from citizenship, it relegated them to the lesser status of state subjects. Beginning in January 1936, German Jews lost citizenship and the rights attached to it.

The second measure, formally titled the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, imposed restrictions on relationships and daily life. It prohibited marriages between Jews and non-Jews, invalidated such marriages even if they had taken place abroad, and banned sexual relationships outside marriage between the two groups. It also barred Jews from employing German women under forty-five in their homes and from displaying the newly designated national flag. The laws made racial classification a basis for determining who could claim citizenship, marry, employ others, or publicly display a national symbol.

Consequences and Significance

The measures passed at the Reichstag’s Nuremberg session were not the end of the process. In the following months and years, the Reichstag added dozens of laws restricting German Jews across nearly every aspect of life. The progression turned exclusion into an expanding legal system: the 1935 laws stripped citizenship and imposed specific prohibitions, while subsequent legislation further narrowed the conditions of Jewish life until, in effect, being Jewish itself was outlawed.

The session’s setting and function are inseparable. By convening the Reichstag at a major Nazi rally and making legislation part of the spectacle, the regime joined public performance to the force of law. The parliament’s role in the episode was to provide the forum through which racial persecution was formally enacted and extended.