This collection of printed sheets was a record of persons whose German citizenship had been withdrawn between 1933 and 1941 in compliance with the Law on the Repeal of Naturalisation and Recognition of German Citizenship enacted on 14 July 1933. The index encompasses consignment 1 dated 11 May 1938 to consignment 212 dated 25 April 1944.

Expatriation, i.e. enforced withdrawal of citizenship, was one of the legal instruments used by the Nazis against political opponents and in particular the Jews. As early as 1920, the NSDAP's party program called for the Jewish population to be expatriated. The first lists appeared in 1933, compiled by the newly established Secret Police. However, this card index of emigrants was lost at the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office) in Berlin at the end of the war.

The Law on the Repeal of Naturalisation and Recognition of German Citizenship was passed on 14 July 1933 – four months after the Enabling Act (Law for Rectification of the Distress of the Nation and Reich of 24 March 1933). The names of expatriated persons were published in the Reichsanzeiger (Reich Gazette) and Preussischer Staatsanzeiger (Prussian State Gazette) together with various special lists, for prominent figures, and with lists of adjustments; in the Reichssteuerblatt (Reich Tax Gazette) for fiscal reasons; and in hectographed lists issued by the Foreign Office (for the embassies and consulates), all of which are reproduced in the Gesamtverzeichnis der Ausbürgerungslisten 1933–1938 [Directory of Lists of Expatriated Persons 1933–1938] compiled and edited by Carl Misch. - Paris: Verlag der Pariser Tageszeitung, 1939
The Reichsanzeiger is the complete document.

Between 25 August 1933 and 7 April 1945, around 39,000 German emigrants were expatriated on the basis of this law alone. Subsequent legislation tightened the expatriation criteria still further, for example the 11th amendment to the Reichsbürgergesetz (Law of the Reich Citizen) passed on 25 November 1941, which deprived persons living outside the borders of the Reich of their citizenship, i.e. also those who had been deported to extermination camps in the east. This mass expatriation caused an estimated 250,000 to 280,000 German Jews to lose their German citizenship and have their property confiscated.

Sources:

• Siehr, Sabine: Das Recht auf die Deutsche Staatsbürgerschaft für ausgebürgerte deutsche Juden und ihre Nachkommen (Expatriated German Jews, Their Descendants, and the Right to German Citizenship) / by Sabine Siehr und Daniel Eichmann. - pp. 89-94. In: Zeitschrift für Ausländerpolitik: ZAR. - 22(2002)3
• Die Ausbürgerung deutscher Staatsangehöriger 1933-45 nach den im Reichsanzeiger veröffentlichten Listen = Expatriation lists as published in the "Reichsanzeiger" 1933-45 / ed. by Michael Hepp. - Munich ; New York ; London ; Paris : Saur, 1985