Heinrich Krieger

Heinrich Krieger was a German lawyer instrumental in providing knowledge of American race law to National Socialist policy-makers. As an exchange student at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1933–34, he engaged in an in-depth examination of American Indian Law. Some of his research later served as the basis for the Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece racial legislation of the early National Socialist Administration.

Background

Heinrich Krieger’s date of birth is unknown. There is no information about what brought him to Arkansas. Upon his return to Germany, Krieger produced a memorandum, presumably based on research he had begun in Arkansas, that was used in a critical 1934 meeting for planning what would become the Nuremberg Laws. The memorandum described American race law of the Jim Crow era in careful detail, reviewing both legislation and judicial practice. Krieger’s account of American anti-miscegenation laws seems to have been of particular interest to Nazi lawyers, and it was probably influential on the Blood Law promulgated at Nuremberg in 1935. Krieger expanded upon his research to produce, in 1936, a major German-language study, Das Rassenrecht in den Vereinigten Staaten (Race Law in the United States).