Mischling
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mischling ("[someone of] mixed [ancestry]" in German) was the German term used during the Third Reich era in the German Empire to denote persons deemed to have partial Jewish ancestry. The word has essentially the same origin as the Spanish mestizo and the French métis, and literally means "mixed person."
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[edit] The Nuremberg laws
As defined by the Nuremberg laws in 1935, a Jew was somebody who had at least three Jewish grandparents --- regardless of religious affiliation or self-identification. The latter did matter for people with two Jewish grandparents: if they belonged to the Jewish religion or were married to Jews, they were classified as Jewish; if neither, they were considered Mischlinge of the first degree. Somebody with only one Jewish grandparent was classified as a Mischling of the second degree. [R. Hilberg, "Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders", p. 150ff]
[edit] Standards of the SS
The SS used a more stringent standard: In order to join, a candidate had to prove (presumably, through baptismal records) that all direct ancestors born since 1750 were not Jewish, or they could apply for a German Blood Certificate.
[edit] “Mischlinge” were often Roman Catholics
Persons meeting the 1st or 2nd degree Mischling criteria were often Roman Catholic by religion: In the 19th Century a sizable number of German Jews converted to Christianity, with virtually all of those doing so choosing to become Roman Catholics rather than Protestants; as a result, due to intermarriage, a number of Roman Catholics in Germany had some traceable Jewish ancestry by the time the Nazis came to power.
[edit] Reclassification Procedure
Requests for reclassification (e.g., Jew as Mischling 1st degree, 1st degree as 2nd degree) or Aryanization (see German Blood Certificate) were personally reviewed by Adolf Hitler himself. Apparently, he considered the issue important enough to him that he found time to review a few thousand such files.
[edit] Nazi Definitions Compared to Jewish Definitions
For comparison, a person is considered Jewish under Halacha (Jewish law) if born from a Jewish mother or if (s)he converted to Judaism according to established procedure. (There is no such thing as a "half-Jew" in Judaism, and the race or ancestry of converts is considered irrelevant.) A Gentile convert to Judaism would have been considered Aryan by the Nazis (although probably would have been persecuted as "Volksfeindlich", i.e., inimical to the German Volk), while a person with three Jewish grandparents and a Gentile maternal grandmother would have been considered Jewish by the Nazis but Gentile according to Jewish law. (Conversely, a person with three Gentile grandparents but a Jewish maternal grandmother would have been considered a Mischling of the 2nd degree by the Nazis but considered a Jew according to Jewish law.)
[edit] Numbers of People Considered “Mischlinge”
According to the 1939 Reich census, there were about 72,000 Mischlinge of the 1st degree, some 39,000 of the 2nd degree, and tens of thousands more of higher degrees. [D. Bankier, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 3, Number 1 (1988), pp.1-20.]
[edit] Prominent “Mischlinge”
Some examples of Mischlinge: the future federal chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Kriegsmarine captain Bernhard Rogge were 2nd degree Mischlinge; Werner Goldberg was a 1st-degree Mischling. Luftwaffe builder Erhard Milch (who had a Jewish father) would have been a 1st degree Mischling but was reclassified as Aryan based on (dubious at best) evidence that he was the biological offspring of his mother's non-Jewish lover.
[edit] Modern German usage
In modern German usage the word is no longer used to designate persons of partial Jewish ancestry, but instead refers to people of mixed race background. The word has lost most of the negative connotations it once had.
