Within the Reich itself, the Third Reich focused less upon defining and classifying Aryans and put more effort in delimiting and excluding racial undesirables. Starting in 1933 and codified by the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, the state's conceptualization of citizenship became predicated upon family genealogy. Individuals whose grandparents were not Jewish were Deutschblütiger or German-blooded. Where the tiered classification system came into play was when individual had some Jewish ancestors. One Jewish grandparent led to the classification of 2nd Degree Mischling. 1st Degree Mischlinge were individuals with two Jewish grandparents. Within the 1st Degree Mischling classifications there was further sub-classifications for parents or descendents of multiple mixed couplings. Both Mischlinge statuses recognized these individuals as citizens, but were not a full component of the racial Volksgemeinschaft of the Third Reich. Anyone with more than three Jewish grandparents was a Jew. For individuals seeking state employment in sensitive areas, like entry into the SS, they had to provide genealogical data past their grandparents.

This classification status became recorded in the Ahnenpaß, which was an internal identification booklet with genealogical data certified by local state authorities. Mischlinge were subject to restrictions on state employment and marriage, and the Third Reich's system of racial classification had a degree of arbitrariness to it. The Mischlinge's citizenship status was always in danger of being revoked. One of the contentious issues at the Wannsee Conference was whether or not Mischlinge should be deported, sterilized, or kept under the status quo. Nor were things necessarily easy for those with Deutschblütiger status. The various governmental offices for attesting a Germanic racial genealogy were often quite overburdened with caseloads and a number of people grumbled about having to gather paperwork for a genealogical status everyone in the community already knew. How to-books on genealogy and private genealogical researchers became growth industry in 1930s. Jewish archivists became for a time a somewhat protected class in Germany because they often held the records that that could determine whether or not a Jewish ancestor entered into a family before the Interior Ministry's arbitrary cutoff dates.