The absorption of Austria into the German Reich in March 1938 made the Supreme Court superfluous and, in fact, inconvenient. For one thing, the German judiciary used the same four-tier hierarchy as its Austrian counterpart. The judicial districts served by German and Austrian local, regional, and higher regional courts, respectively, were roughly comparable in size. Decisions of Germany's 28 higher regional courts were appealed to the Reichsgericht in Leipzig; there was no strong reason for an extra appeals court intermediating between the Reichsgericht and the paltry 3 higher regional courts of the Reich's new province, the State of Austria ().