SEARCH FOR ANCESTRY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21983, 19 June 1933, Page 8

SEARCH FOR ANCESTRY

LINEAGE OF GERMANS DEMANDS OF NEW REGIME. BERLIN, June 3. Owing to the importance which the Nazis * attach to the distinction between Aryans and non-Aryans, the offices of the registrars of births, deaths, and marriages are overflowing. Thousands of people are anxious to discover their lineage, all hoping to prove that they are true-blooded Aryans, but many have been disappointed by the finding of a skeleton in the family cupboard. Both public registries and private research bureaux have been forced to increase their staffs' to cope with the rush td trace pedigrees. The task is complicated by the fact that civil registers were begun only in 1875. This necessitates consultation with church records, dating to the sixteenth century, and many are incomplete owing to destruction in the Thirty Years' War. Dr Gercke, chief of the Government's new Racial Research Department, de-. fines non-Aryans as non-European tribes, such as Mongols and negroes. He says that the Germanic races are natural-born Aryans, but not all Aryans are Germans. For the Nazis' purposes Germans must prove Aryan descent since 1800, which is selected because the emancipation of the Jews in Germany occurred between 1806 and ,1813. Inter-marriage was hardly possible previously. .