‘Ausweis Bitte!’ Identity and Identification in Nazi Germany

Abstract

Who was who in Nazi Germany was notoriously a matter of life and death, governed by the collective identities imposed on ‘racial’ and social groups, notably the Nuremberg laws (1935) imposing so-called racial identities or the regulations on policing the social categories of ‘gypsies’ or criminals. Obviously any group identity or category is composed of numerous people who are individually the subjects of identity and identification and who are in practice the target of policing and enforcement; and any system of enforcement is only as complete as the individual records on which it relies. While the categorical side of the identity equation in Nazi Germany has been explored in various ways, the question of how individual identity and identification were established and policed has attracted comparatively less notice, other than in the case of the identification of ‘Jews’. Even if we look beyond collective systems like the population census or the collection of statistics, which have received the lion’s share of attention, numbers and the technologies of recording and classification have been studied more than the papers and policing that constituted the direct interface between the individual and the authorities.¹