If there was a medal for increasing the population of a country, I should get one. Because I have already helped hundreds of people to obtain German citizenship.
Maybe I can help you too.
There are basically three ways to the German passport:
Naturalization
If you live in Germany for several years, learn the language, pass the citizenship exam and stay out of trouble, you can apply for naturalization.
This is a straightforward approach, which rarely requires a lawyer. I usually only have to intervene when the German government doesn’t recognize all of the time you have spent in Germany, when they make a fuss about dual citizenship (a problem which just ceased to be one) or in other very peculiar cases.
There is a theoretical way for people to get naturalized as a German citizen without living in Germany, if you can show exceptional ties to Germany. However, since § 14 StAG was mainly used for restitution cases, which now fall under § 5 StAG, the practical relevance of this clause is now restricted to very exceptional cases. Please don’t waste your money by trying this route.
Descent
If you have German ancestors, even if they left Germany several generations ago, you may qualify for German citizenship.
In fact, I can surprise many clients who contact me from Brazil, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Colombia, the United States, Argentina or anywhere else in the world, by telling them – after looking at their line of ancestors – that they already are German. They have been from the moment they were born, without anyone noticing. Such is the craziness of citizenship law.
Once, a short ride with the taxi in Santa Cruz was enough to analyze the cab driver’s family history and to tell him, congratulations, that he is German. And so are his children.
In other cases, it’s more complicated, because we need to check for every generation and for each of your ancestors whether they might have lost German citizenship – again usually without anyone noticing.
In these cases, my historical knowledge comes in very handy, because clients often have only a sketchy family history to work with. As a student of history, I am aware of the typical migration patterns, of why somebody would have lied about their citizenship at a certain time, and which archives to contact and what to look out for.
The grandmother might always have said that she was German, when in reality she was born in Austro-Hungary or today’s Latvia or Moldova. In the 19th century, most people wouldn’t have had a passport, and they might not have known – or cared much – what citizenship they held. They often identified more along ethnic, linguistic, religious or regional lines.
In the aftermaths of both world wars, millions of people were displaced in Central and Eastern Europe. Many had become stateless. People lived in refugee camps for years,or were born in countries that only existed for a few weeks.
These family stories are the most fascinating part of my job. Sometimes, even when we are not successful, at least we uncover a story well worthy of a novel. In other cases, it turns out that you don’t qualify for German citizenship, but for Austrian, Italian or Romanian citizenship instead. And as these countries are all in the European Union, it doesn’t make any difference.
Restitution
Citizenship by restitution can be granted to descendants of people who once held German citizenship and then lost it in a way that we now deem discriminatory.
That sounds a bit lawyerly-complicated, I concede that, and I will therefore spell out the most important groups of cases.
For once, this applies to all descendants of people who were deprived of or denied German citizenship by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. This concerns mostly German Jews, but also many Social Democrats, Socialists, Communists, trade unionists, journalists or intellectuals, whose German citizenship was revoked by the Nazis.
The other groups are those who hitherto have not received German citizenship due to gender discrimination in earlier versions of the Citizenship Act.
This principally concerns people born to German mothers and foreign fathers before 1975, people born to a German mother who had previously lost her German citizenship due to marrying a foreigner, and children who lost their German citizenship because their German mother married their non-German father.
In all of these (and a few more) cases, you might have previously been told that you do not qualify for German citizenship. But now you do, because the law has been changed. So, please step forward! And do so before 2031, which is the cut-off year for all those cases.
I have more details on all forms of citizenship by restitution in my FAQ on reclaiming German citizenship. And of course, you are always welcome to contact me.
Andreas Moser Rechtsanwalt 
Leave a comment