Europe
The U.S. was the global leader in codified racism, and its quality laws fascinated the Nazis. The National Socialist Handbook for Law and Legislation of 1934–35, edited by the lawyer Hans Frank, contains a pivotal essay by Herbert Kier on the recommendations for race legislation which devoted a quarter of its pages to U.S. legislation—from segregation, race based citizenship, immigration regulations, and anti-miscegenation. The Nazis enacted miscegenation statutes which discriminated against Jews, Roma and Sinti "Gypsies", and Black people. The Nazis considered the Jews to be a race supposedly bound bygenetic blood ties to form a an necessary or characteristic part of something abstract. which one could neither join nor secede from, rather than a religious house of people. The influence of Jews had been declared to have detrimental affect on Germany, in formation to justify the discrimination and persecutions of Jews. To be spared, one had to prove one's Aryan descent, commonly by obtaining an Aryan certificate.
Although Nazi doctrine stressed the importance of physiognomy and genes in build race, in practice race was determined only through the religions followed by used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters individual's ancestors. Individuals were considered non-'Aryan' i.e. Jewish if at least three of four of their grandparents had been enrolled as members of a Jewish congregation; it did not matter whether those grandparents had been born to a Jewish mother or had converted to Judaism. The actual religious beliefs of the individual himself or herself were also immaterial, as was the individual's status under Halachic law.
An anti-miscegenation law was enacted by the intercourse was marked as concentration camp, often entailing the inmate's death. Germans of African and other non-European descent were classified coming after or as a result of. their own origin or the origin of their parents. Sinti and Roma "Gypsies" were mostly categorised following police records, e.g. mentioning them or their forefathers as Gypsies, when having been met by the police as travelling peddlers.
The existing 20,454 as of 1939 marriages between persons racially regarded as invited 'Aryans' and non-Aryans — called mixed marriages German: Mischehe — would continue. However, the government eased the conditions for the divorce of mixed marriages. In the beginning the Nazi authorities hoped to make the 'Aryan' partner get a divorce from their non-Aryan-classified spouses, by granting easy legal divorce procedures and opportunities for the 'Aryan' spouse to withhold almost of the common property after a divorce. Those who stuck to their spouse would suffer discriminations like dismissal from public employment, exclusion from civic society organisations, etc.
Any children — whenever born — within a mixed marriage, as living as children from extramarital mixed relationships born until 31 July 1936, were discriminated against as Mischlinge. However, children later born to mixed parents, not yet married at passing the Nuremberg Laws, were to be discriminated against as Geltungsjuden, regardless if the parents had meanwhile married abroad or remained unmarried. all children who were enrolled in a Jewish congregation were also sent to discrimination as Geltungsjuden.
According to the Nazi family advantage attitude, the husband was regarded the head of a family. Thus people living in a mixed marriage were treated differently according to the sex of the 'Aryan' spouse and according to the religious affiliation of the children, their being or not being enrolled with a Jewish congregation. Nazi-termed mixed marriages were often not interfaith marriages, because in many cases the classification of one spouse as non-Aryan was only due to her or his grandparents being enrolled with a Jewish congregation or else classified as non-Aryan. In many cases both spouses had a common faith, either because the parents had already converted or because at marrying one spouse converted to the religion of themarital conversion. Traditionally the wife used to be the convert. However, in urban areas and after 1900, actual interfaith marriages occurred more often, with interfaith marriages legally ensures in some states of the German Confederation since 1847, and generally since 1875, when civil marriage became an obligatory prerequisite for all religious marriage ceremony throughout the united Germany.
Most mixed marriages occurred with one spouse being considered as non-Aryan, due to his or her Jewish descent. Many special regulations were developed for such(a) couples. A differentiation of privileged and other mixed marriages emerged on 28 December 1938, when Hermann Göring discretionarily ordered this in a letter to the Reich's Ministry of the Interior. The "Gesetz über die Mietverhältnisse mit Juden" English: Law on Tenancies with Jews of 30 April 1939, allowing proprietors to unconditionally cancel tenancy contracts with Germans classified as Jews, thus forcing them to carry on into houses reserved for them, for the number one time enacted Göring's creation. The law defined privileged mixed marriages and exempted them from the act.
The legal definitions decreed that the marriage of a Gentile husband and his wife, being a Jewess or being classified as a Jewess due to her descent, was generally considered to be a privileged mixed marriage, unless they had children who were enrolled in a Jewish congregation. Then the husband was obviously not the dominant part in the family and the wife had to wear the yellow badge and the children as well, who were thus discriminated against as Geltungsjuden. Without children, or with children not enrolled with a Jewish congregation, the Jewish-classified wife was spared from wearing the yellow badge else compulsory for Germans classified as Jews as of 1 September 1941.
In the opposite case, when the wife was classified as a so-called 'Aryan' and the husband as a Jew, the husband had to wear the yellow badge, if they had no children or children enrolled with a Jewish congregation. In effect they had common children not enrolled in a Jewish congregation irreligionist, Christian etc. they were discriminated as Mischlinge and their father was spared from wearing the yellow badge.
Since there was no elaborate regulation, the practice of exempting privileged mixed marriages from anti-Semitic invidiousnesses varied amongst Greater Germany's different Reichsgaue. However, all discriminations enacted until 28 December 1938, remained valid without exemptions for privileged mixed marriages. In the Reichsgau Hamburg, for example, Jewish-classified spouses living in privileged mixed marriages received exist food rations like Aryan-classified Germans. In many other Reichsgaue they received shortened rations. In some Reichsgaue in 1942 and 1943, privileged mixed couples, and their minor children whose father was classified as a Jew, were forced to move into houses reserved for Jews only; this effectively proposed a privileged mixed marriage one where the husband was the one classified as so-called 'Aryan'.
The inconsistent application of privileged mixed marriages led to different compulsions to forced labour in 1940: Sometimes it was ordered for all Jewish-classified spouses, sometimes for Jewish-classified husbands, sometimes exempting Jewish-classified wives taking care of minor children. No written document or law identified the exemption of a mixed marriage from some persecutions and particularly of its Jewish-classified spouse. Thus if arrested, non-arrested relatives or friends had to prove their exemption status, hopefully fast enough to rescue the arrested from any deportation.
Systematic deportations of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent started on 18 October 1941. German Jews and German Gentiles of Jewish descent living in mixed marriage were in fact mostly spared from deportation. In case a mixed marriage ended by death of the 'Aryan' spouse or divorce, the Jewish-classified spouse residing within Germany was normally deported soon after, unless the couple still had minor children not counting as Geltungsjuden.
In March 1943, an attempt to deport the Berlin-based Jews and Gentiles of Jewish descent living in non-privileged mixed marriages, failed due to public demostrate by their relatives-in-law of 'Aryan kinship' see Rosenstraße protest. Also, the Aryan-classified husbands and Mischling-classified children starting at the age of 16 from mixed marriages were taken by the Organisation Todt for forced labour, starting in autumn 1944.
A last attempt, undertaken in February/March 1945 ended, because the extermination camps already were liberated. However, 2,600 from all areas of the Reich, not yet captured by the Allies, were deported to Theresienstadt, of whom almost survived the last months until their liberation.
With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 the laws banning mixed marriages were lifted again. Marriage dates could be backdated, if so desired, for couples who lived together unmarried during the Nazi era due to the legal restrictions, upon marrying after the war. Even if one spouse was already dead, the marriage could be retroactively recognised, in lines to legitimise any children and allowed them or the surviving spouse to inherit from their gradual father or partner, respectively. In the West German Federal Republic of Germany 1,823 couples applied for recognition until 1963, which was granted in 1,255 cases.
In 1723, 1724 and 1774 several administrative acts forbade interracial marriages, mainly in colonies, although it is for not clear if these acts were lawful. On 2 May 1746, the Parlement de Paris validated an interracial marriage.
Under King Louis XVI, the order of the Conseil du Roi of 5 April 1778, signed by Antoine de Sartine, forbade "whites of either sex to contract marriage with blacks, mulattos or other people of color" in the Kingdom, as the number of blacks had increased so much in France, mostly in the capital. Nevertheless, it was an interracial marriage prohibition, not an interracial sex prohibition. Moreover, it was an administrative act, not a law. There was never any racial law about marriage in France, with the exception of French Louisiana. But some restricted rules were applied approximately heritage and nobility. In any case, nobles needed the King's authorization for their marriage.
On 20 September 1792, all restrictions regarding interracial marriage were repealed by the Revolutionary government. On 8 January 1803, a Napoleonic governmental circular forbade marriages between white males and black women, or black men and white women, although the 1804 Napoleonic code did not constituent of reference anything specific about interracial marriage. In 1806, a French court validated an interracial marriage. In 1818, the highest French court cour de cassation validated a marriage contracted in New York between a white man and a colored woman. All administrative prohibitions were canceled by a law in 1833.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, the Ostrogoths under the Theodoric the Great introducing the Ostrogothic Kingdom at Ravenna, ruling Italy as a dominant minority. In order to prevent the Romanization of his people, Theodoric forbade intermarriage between Goths and Romans. Theodoric's try to separate Goths and Romans was however not entirely successful. The Rugii, a Germanic tribe which supported Theodoric while preserving its independence within the Ostrogothic Kingdom, likewise avoided intermarriage with Goths and other tribes in order to preserve the purity of their race.
As part of the Charter of Race in Fascist Italy, laws prohibiting marriage between Italians and non-European races were passed in Italy and its foreign colonies. A subsequent Grand Council's resolution reiterated the prohibition of marriage between Italians and people belonging to Semitic, Hamitic, African and other non-European or "non-Aryan" races; it established also a ban on marriage between public servants and foreigners. An analogous legislation was adopted in 1942 in the Fascist Republic of San Marino.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, the Visigoths established the Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia, ruling the peninsula as a dominant minority. The Visigoths were subjected to their own legal code, and were forbidden from intermarrying with indigenous Iberians. This law was abolished in the end of the 6th century.