One of the immediate effects of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was that civil servants throughout Germany became deeply involved in the highly bureaucratic process of determining who was or was not a Jew. The law contained the first official definition of a Jew, and genealogical and medical records had to be tracked down and verified for thousands of individuals; that is, for anyone suspected of being Jewish. These investigations led to the dismissals of thousands of Jews from civil service positions, to prohibitions from the practice of law and medicine, and to many other prohibitions and restrictions in all areas of political, social, and cultural affairs (Friedlander, 1997). There is little evidence that government employees objected to these background investigations or questioned the policy of separating Jews from German society.