On 7 April 1933 the ‘Law on the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service’ was adopted in the German Reich. Its purpose was to bring all state employees under National Socialist control and to dismiss any of them who were ‘undesirable’ or did not conform. The so-called Aryan Paragraph (§ 3) of this law barred Jews from state employment.

In Austria the ‘Regulation on the Restructuring of the Austrian Professional Civil Service’ came into force on 31 May 1938, shortly after the Anschluss. Like its German counterpart, this law contained provisions to disenfranchise and exclude Jews and other opponents of the Nazi regime.