NAZI MARRIAGE CODE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23139, 10 September 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

NAZI MARRIAGE CODE

NEW GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE "UNREASONABLE JEALOUSY" Gossip, meanness and extreme and unreasonable jealousy may be grounds for divorce under a new code of marriage laws for the whole of the German Reich, including Austria. It has been signed by Hitler and came into force on August 1. Only civil marriages will be legal, and the State assumes the right to prevent certain marriages from taking place. Grounds for divorce are enlarged to include, among other causes: Adultery, refusal to have children, desertion, insanity, infectious or objectionable disease which does not yield to treatment, and sterility. Persons not of age wishing to marry must obtain the consent of both parents (previously the consent of the father was sufficient). Children of marriages declared invalid are not to bo considered illegitimate in law. The law declares that while respect for matrimony is the natural basis for the community, it must be possible to dissolve the marriage "in a decent way " if it is of no further valuo to the community. " The necessity of an immediate alteration of the intolerable conditions which existed in Austria " is emphasised. Austria, with a Roman Catholic population of about 80 per cent, has hitherto had no civil marriago.