Understanding Article 116 (2) of the German Basic Law
Germany wrote its answer to one part of its own history into its constitution. Article 116 (2) of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz) gives people whose German citizenship was taken from them by the Nazi regime, and their descendants, the right to have it restored.
What the provision says
In the official English translation published by the German federal authorities, the first sentence reads:
“Former German citizens who between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial or religious grounds, and their descendants, shall on application have their citizenship restored.”
A second sentence follows, providing that such persons are deemed never to have been deprived of citizenship if they took up residence in Germany after 8 May 1945 and did not express a contrary intention. It matters, because it is the reason some families are treated as having been German continuously rather than as being restored.
The consequence of the first sentence is that this is a right, not a favour. There is no residence requirement, no language examination, no integration test, and no discretion once the conditions are met: on application, citizenship is restored.
Who it reaches
You may fall within the article if:
- an ancestor of yours was deprived of German citizenship between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945; and
- the ground was political, racial or religious; and
- you descend from that person.
Deprivation took two forms. Some were individual, by decree naming the person, often published in the Reichsanzeiger. Others were collective: the Eleventh Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law, of 25 November 1941, stripped German Jews who were resident abroad of their citizenship automatically. For families in the second group there is no personal decree to produce, and the file has to establish residence abroad on that date instead.
What the 2021 reform did, and did not do
It is often written that the reform of August 2021 changed Article 116 (2). It did not. The Fourth Act Amending the Nationality Act left the constitutional provision untouched and created two statutory routes beside it, in § 5 and § 15 StAG.
That distinction is not academic. Article 116 (2) requires a deprivation. A great many persecution-related losses were not deprivations: an ancestor who fled and then naturalized abroad lost German citizenship by their own act, under the law as it then stood. Those cases fall outside the article, and it was precisely that gap that § 15 StAG was written to close. Where a family was excluded instead by the old gender and marital-status rules, § 5 StAG provides acquisition by declaration, with a deadline of 19 August 2031.
What a file needs
- Proof of the ancestor's German citizenship: birth or baptismal record, passport, family register, consular registration.
- Evidence of the deprivation and of its ground: the decree if there was one, or the documents that place the ancestor abroad in 1941, or emigration and persecution records.
- Documents proving your descent from that person, generation by generation.
- Certified translations, and the application in the form the Bundesverwaltungsamt requires.
Where documents are missing, and after eighty years many are, the case is often built on indirect evidence and on historical context. That is ordinary in this field, and it is where the work lies.
Why it matters beyond the passport
Families who go through this describe the outcome in terms that have little to do with travel rights. What they receive is a formal acknowledgment by the German state that something was taken and has been given back. Whether your family has that claim is a question of documents and of law, and it is worth finding out while the documents still exist.