History
Prussian law was the basis of the legal system of the German Empire. Prussia's nationality law can be traced back to the "Law Respecting the Acquisition and Loss of the Quality as a Prussian subject, and his Admission to Foreign Citizenship" of 31 December 1842, which introduced Jus sanguinis to the country. Until 1913, however, each German state had its own nationality laws, those of the southern ones (notably Bavaria) being quite liberal. In 1913, the Nationality Law of the German Empire and States (Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, shorthand: RuStAG) of 22 July 1913 established a German citizenship, either derived from the citizenship of one of the component states of the German Empire or acquired through the Reich's government. It had been operational until the 1999 reforms.
Under the Third Reich the German nationality law was amended in 1934, doing away with the separate states' citizenships in favour of a uniform Reich's citizenship, leaving it to the central Reich authorities to naturalise or denaturalise persons. In 1935 the Reich's Citizen Law (Reichsbürgergesetz), the second of the Nuremberg Laws, split the uniform citizenship again, declassing Germans categorised as Jews as second-class citizens, as Staatsangehörige (state affiliates), whereas so-called Aryans counted as Reich's citizens.
In 1938 the German nationality law was extended to Austria under the Anschluss which annexed Austria to Germany. On 27 April 1945 the Republic of Austria was re-established and conferred Austrian citizenship on all persons who would have been Austrian on that date had the former (pre-1938) nationality law of Austria remained in force. Such persons lost their German nationality automatically. Also see Austrian nationality law.
The Nazi amendments and the Nuremberg Laws were revoked by Allied occupational ordinance in 1945.
Read more about this topic: German Nationality Law
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