Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring

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.

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.

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".

[4] In the first year of the law's operation, 1934, 84,600 cases were brought to Genetic Health Courts, with 62,400 forced sterilisations.

[5] By the end of the Nazi regime, over 200 "Genetic Health Courts" were created, and under their rulings over 400,000 people were sterilized against their will.