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Authority and accountability · Claim record

The Prussian Ministry of the Interior issued the decree suppressing the Society's activities and confiscating its property on 24 June 1933, the day before the Berlin convention met.

Claim ID claim-authority-de33-prussian-ban-24-juneConcerns 24 June 1933Independent finding
Independent finding · 24 June 1933 Verified

The Prussian Ministry of the Interior issued the decree suppressing the Society's activities and confiscating its property on 24 June 1933, the day before the Berlin convention met. Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1933, Volume II, 12 July 1933Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1933, Volume II, 4 December 1933Awake!, 8 July 1998

The organisation’s position or later explanation: The organisation dates the ban to the same day, saying that “a ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany had been issued on Saturday, June 24, 1933, just the day before the Berlin convention”, that the convention organisers and the police learned of it a few days later, and that those who attended “courageously put their liberty at risk”.

Show the evidence (3 sources)
Official public record Verified

Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1933, Volume II, “The Consul General at Berlin (Messersmith) to the Acting Secretary of State, No. 1428”

12 July 1933 · p.408 · George S. Messersmith · United States Department of State

“The work of the Society has been at an utter standstill in all the states of Germany except Prussia; but on June 24 a decree was issued by the Prussian Ministry of the Interior and signed by Dr. Grauert, the Under Secretary of State in that Ministry. . . . In the decree of June 24 forbidding the activities of the Society throughout Germany, it was also provided that the property be confiscated.”

A despatch from the American Consul General in Berlin reporting on the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. It records that Rutherford had been in Europe for a number of months, came to Germany “a number of weeks ago” and had a long interview at the Consulate General with Consul Geist, and that it was pointed out to him that the Consulate General “would be unable to make any representations to the German Government regarding the ban that had been put upon their activities and that it could use its good offices only to protect the physical property of the organization excluding pamphlets, booklets and brochures which the police had condemned as being anti-revolutionary and communistic in tendency”.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Opened on the United States Department of State Office of the Historian site on 19 September 2026 and read in full. Both sentences quoted stand on p. 408 of the printed edition, whose page breaks are marked in the text; the despatch as a whole runs pp. 407-410. The ellipsis stands for three sentences about the copy of the decree enclosed with the despatch, about the legal complexities it raised, and about the powers conferred by the Reich President’s decree of 28 February 1933.

Notes. This confirms from a contemporaneous, non-Witness record that the Prussian ban was decreed on 24 June 1933, the day before the Berlin convention.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-frus-messersmith-1428

Official public record Verified

Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1933, Volume II, “The Ambassador in Germany (Dodd) to the Acting Secretary of State, No. 309”

4 December 1933 · p.414 · William E. Dodd · United States Department of State

“I have the honor to enclose copies and translation of a note verbale dated November 13, from the Foreign Office, and of its enclosure, the decree of June 24 issued by the Prussian Ministry of the Interior suppressing the activities of the Society in Prussia and confiscating its property.”

The opening sentence of the American Embassy’s despatch forwarding the German Foreign Office’s formal answer. The despatch records that Mr Harbeck, the Society’s superintendent for Central Europe, had stated on 1 December that the Magdeburg property had been restored “but that all religious activities are forbidden”.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Opened on the United States Department of State Office of the Historian site on 19 September 2026 and read in full. The sentence quoted stands on p. 414; the despatch runs pp. 414-416. It is issued over the Ambassador’s name but is signed at its foot “For the Ambassador: J. C. White”.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-frus-dodd-decree

Primary JW publication Verified

Awake!, “Jehovah's Witnesses—Courageous in the Face of Nazi Peril”

8 July 1998 · p.14 · Awake! correspondent in Germany · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“According to the account in the 1974 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, some German Witnesses were disappointed that the language of the “Declaration” was not more explicit in tone. Had the branch office manager, Paul Balzereit, weakened the text of the document? No, for a comparison of the German and the English texts shows that this is not the case.”

Part of a section answering specific criticisms. The article also states that photographs of the convention “clearly show that they displayed no swastikas in the hall” while conceding that “it is possible, however, that there were flags on the building’s exterior”; that the convention began not with the national anthem but with “Zion’s Glorious Hope”, whose Haydn melody the German government adopted for the national anthem in 1922; and that “a ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany had been issued on Saturday, June 24, 1933, just the day before the Berlin convention”. The article does not say that the ban of 24 June was a Prussian decree; that comes from the United States diplomatic record.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read in full; the passage quoted stands on p. 14, the page taken from the pageNum markers. The article runs pp. 10-14, and the organisation’s own index cites this section of it as pp. 12-14.

Corroborated by. src-de33-yb74-convention, src-de33-frus-messersmith-1428

Notes. The article gives the number of copies distributed as 2.1 million, agreeing with the 1974 Year Book and differing from the 2,500,000 printed in the 1934 Year Book.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-g98-rebuttals

Claim page Correct or update

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-authority-de33-prussian-ban-24-june/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.