Four routes, and the rules that break a line

1. Citizenship by descent, § 4 StAG

The German Nationality Act (Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, StAG) provides in § 4 that a child acquires German citizenship at birth if at least one parent is German at that moment. This is the principle of Abstammung, descent, and it applies wherever the child is born.

There is no rule limiting claims to the third generation, and no rule that the German ancestor must be a grandparent. The decisive question is different and narrower: did German nationality actually pass from each generation to the next, under the law in force on the date of each birth? Families whose ancestor left Germany in the 1880s are recognized today; families whose ancestor left in the 1950s sometimes are not. The date matters more than the number of generations.

Rules that once blocked transmission and have since been lifted:

• Children born in wedlock before 1 January 1975 to a German mother and a foreign father did not acquire German citizenship from the mother.
• Children born out of wedlock before 1 July 1993 to a German father did not acquire it from the father unless paternity was established and further conditions met.
• A German woman who married a foreign national before 1 April 1953 lost her German citizenship by the marriage itself.

These exclusions were recognized as unjust. They were not simply deleted from the past, though: a person affected by one of them is normally not German by birth, and reaches citizenship through the declaration or naturalization routes described below.

2. How a line breaks: the loss provisions

This is the part most often left out, and it is where most cases are decided. A German ancestor who lost citizenship before the next birth in the line transmitted nothing, and no later generation can inherit what was already gone.

Under § 21 of the nationality act of 1870, a German who spent ten uninterrupted years abroad lost citizenship. Registration in the consular register interrupted that period. The provision was repealed with effect from 1914.

In practice this means that emigration before the turn of the twentieth century is the hardest scenario, and that a single entry in a consular register, found in an archive, can preserve an entire line. It also means that the absence of such an entry is not the end of the analysis, because the ten years had to be uninterrupted.

Other losses that interrupt transmission:

• Voluntary naturalization abroad. For long periods, acquiring another nationality on application caused automatic loss of German citizenship. Whether it did in a given case depends on the date and on the law then in force.
• The generation cut, § 4 (4) StAG. A child born abroad does not acquire German citizenship at birth where the German parent was also born abroad after 31 December 1999 and is habitually resident abroad, unless the birth is reported to a German mission within one year. The date belongs to the birth of the parent, not of the child, and this is the detail most frequently reported incorrectly.

3. Restitution under Article 116 (2) of the Basic Law

Article 116 (2) of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) provides that former German citizens who were deprived of their citizenship between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945 on political, racial or religious grounds, and their descendants, shall have their citizenship restored on application. The provision has been in force since the Basic Law itself, in 1949.

Deprivation was sometimes individual, by decree naming the person. It was also collective: the Eleventh Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law, of 25 November 1941, stripped German Jews resident abroad of their citizenship automatically, without any individual act.

Restoration under this article does not require residence in Germany, does not require a language examination, and does not require giving up another nationality. Where the statutory conditions are met, the authority must grant the application. What has to be established is the deprivation, its ground, and the applicant's descent from the person deprived, and the evidentiary demands are high.

4. The reparation provisions of August 2021

The Fourth Act Amending the Nationality Act, in force since 20 August 2021, created two new routes. They do not amend Article 116 (2); they sit beside it and reach cases it does not cover.

Acquisition by declaration, § 5 StAG

§ 5 StAG allows people who were excluded from German citizenship by the discriminatory rules described above, chiefly the gender and marital status rules, to acquire it by a simple declaration. It is not discretionary: where the conditions are met, the authority must accept the declaration. It is also the only route here with an expiry date. The declaration must be made by 19 August 2031.

Reparation naturalization, § 15 StAG

§ 15 StAG covers those who lost German citizenship, or were never able to acquire it, for reasons connected to Nazi persecution but outside the formal deprivation that Article 116 (2) requires. The typical case is an ancestor who fled Germany and naturalized abroad in order to survive, losing German citizenship by that act rather than by decree. Descendants are included. There is no language or residence requirement.

Which of the two applies, and whether either does, is a question of German law and of what the documents show. It is examined case by case, and it is not answered by a form.

What a file normally has to contain

• The German ancestor's birth or baptismal record, and any German passport, marriage record or consular registration.
• Evidence on the question of loss: naturalization files, or evidence that no naturalization occurred, which is often the most delicate step.
• Birth and marriage records of every generation between the ancestor and the applicant, without a gap.
• For persecution cases, the documents that establish the deprivation and its ground: emigration files, decrees, restitution records.
• Certified translations into German by a sworn translator, and apostilles or legalizations where required.