Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring

Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (German: Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) or "Sterilisation Law" was a statute in Nazi Germany enacted on 14 July 1933, (and made active in January 1934) which allowed the compulsory sterilisation of any citizen who in the opinion of a "Genetic Health Court" (Erbgesundheitsgericht) suffered from a list of alleged genetic disorders – many of which were not, in fact, genetic. The elaborate interpretive commentary on the law was written by three dominant figures in the racial hygiene movement: Ernst Rüdin, Arthur Gütt and the lawyer Falk Ruttke.

While it has close resemblances with the American Model Eugenical Sterilization Law developed by Harry H. Laughlin, the law itself was initially drafted in 1932, at the end of the Weimar Republic period, by a committee led by the Prussian health board.

Operation of the law

The basic provisions of the 1933 law stated that:

(1) Any person suffering from a hereditary disease may be rendered incapable of procreation by means of a surgical operation (sterilization), if the experience of medical science shows that it is highly probable that his descendants would suffer from some serious physical or mental hereditary defect.

(2) For the purposes of this law, any person will be considered as hereditarily diseased who is suffering from any one of the following diseases:–

(1) Congenital Mental Deficiency,

(2) Schizophrenia,

(3) Manic-Depressive Insanity,

(4) Hereditary Epilepsy,

(5) Hereditary Chorea (Huntington's),

(6) Hereditary Blindness,

(7) Hereditary Deafness,

(8) Any severe hereditary deformity.

(3) Any person suffering from severe alcoholism may be also rendered incapable of procreation.

The law applied to anyone in the general population, making its scope significantly larger than the compulsory sterilisation laws in the United States, which generally were only applicable on people in psychiatric hospitals or prisons.

The 1933 law created a large number of "Genetic Health Courts" (German: Erbgesundheitsgericht, EGG), consisting of a judge, a medical officer, and medical practitioner, which "shall decide at its own discretion after considering the results of the whole proceedings and the evidence tendered". If the court decided that the person in question was to be sterilised, the decision could be appealed to the "Higher Genetic Health Court" (German: Erbgesundheitsobergericht, EGOG). If the appeal failed, the sterilization was to be carried out, with the law specifying that "the use of force is permissible".