This "law" established that only Aryan Germans who could prove the purity of their bloodline back to 1800 could own a farm.The Old Testament can I believe be used to suport the idea of, as law of the founding era put it, holding property "in fee tail." Precisely how the feudal estates were held together--the oldest son inherited the entire real estate of his father with the proviso that he had to pass the entire real estate down to his oldest son. Which of course excludes the idea of using the property as collateral for a loan; it would be illegal to relinquish ownership of it.Every farm up to 308 acres was declared a hereditary estate-it could not be sold, divided, mortgaged or foreclosed on for debt. With the death of its owner, it would pass to his nearest male relative, who in turn was obligated to provide an income and education for his relatives. The peasant farmer was called a bauer or peasant, an "honored title" that he forfeited if he broke the "peasant honor code"-that is, if he stopped farming.
The inheritor of such land might easily be "property poor," and (according to Dumas Malone's biography of Jefferson) it was common for members of the House of Burgess of Virginia to get a law passed which allowed a member to sell a particular parcel of land to escape the problem. But Jefferson, when he fell into the clutches of that trap, cut the Gordian Knot--he pushed through the House of Burgess the following law:
Problem solved. Not evaded, but abolished.
The irony of Hitler's version is that it pretty clearly turns the landowner into a de facto serf.