Lawyer for immigration law in Cologne

6. German nationality by descent

Who Should Already Be German — Their Own Legal Path

Not every path to German citizenship by descent leads to five years of residency and a B1 certificate. German law provides a specific legal path for a certain group of people: for descendants who should actually already be German citizens – but whose family history has been interrupted by National Socialist persecution, by gender-based unequal treatment in nationality law before 1975, or by involuntary loss of citizenship (for example, through marriage to a foreigner or by acquiring a foreign nationality).

For these cases, German law provides three different grounds for claims. Which of them is applicable depends on, when, Why and which ancestor German nationality was lost.

An overview of the three paths

With all three routes, Dual nationality Permitted: You do not have to renounce your previous nationality. Which route applies in your case depends on the specific historical circumstances.

Pathway 1: Reparation under Art. 116 (2) of the Basic Law

This is the strongest and most generous claim – and the path taken by the vast majority of Jewish descendants of German citizens whose families were persecuted, expelled, or murdered during the Nazi era.

Those eligible are:

• Former German nationals who were deprived of their nationality between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945 for political, racial or religious reasons — most expatriations were effected on the basis of the 11th Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law of 25 November 1941
• Their descendants — children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, with no limit on the number of generations

Essential features of the claim:

• It is a Legal claim, rather than a discretionary decision: if the conditions are met, must naturalisation by the Federal Office of Administration
• No language test, no residency requirement, no proof of income
• Application for Federal Office of Administration (BVA) in Cologne
• Current processing times: usually 18 to 36 months, as the case may be

A detailed overview of this procedure can be found in our article on Reparations for Jewish descendants and Holocaust victims.

Route 2: Discretionary naturalisation under Section 15 of the Nationality Act (StAG)

When researching records, many descendants of persecuted families discover that their ancestor held German citizenship before lost on 30 January 1933 — for example, through emigration and naturalisation in the USA in the 1920s, or because they were already stateless at the time of persecution. Until 2021, these families had no independent route to claim.

Section 15 of the StAG, introduced on 20 August 2021, closes this gap. It is a discretionary provision – the authority „is to“ naturalise if the requirements are met. In practice, the success rate for carefully documented cases is high.

Typical case constellations under § 15 StAG:

• Jewish ancestors who, due to growing anti-Semitism, already before 1933 emigrated and were naturalised abroad
• Ancestors who, at the time of persecution, already Stateless were
• Descendants of ancestors who have citizenship before 1933 deprived through discriminatory regulations

Route 3: Right to Explanation under § 5 StAG

§ 5 StAG concerns a different historical injustice: the systematic discrimination against women and children of unmarried German mothers in the nationality law of the pre-1975 period. This is not about Nazi persecution, but about Gender inequality, which was enshrined in the imperial and federal citizenship laws for decades.

Entitled persons include, in particular, five categories of cases:

1. Children born to a German mother and a foreign father before 1 January 1975 — they were excluded because, for children born within marriage, German nationality was solely transmitted through the father.
2. Non-marital children of a German father and a foreign mother, born before 1 July 1993
3. Women who lost German citizenship by marriage to a foreigner before 1 April 1953 - and their descendants
4. Children whose German parent lost their nationality before their birth, under circumstances that would not have led to such a loss under current law
5. Descendants of all the aforementioned categories of cases — without generational limitation

The crucial deadline The right of declaration under § 5 StAG is limited until 19 August 2031. Anyone who misses this deadline will permanently lose their entitlement. Anyone struggling with a thin file — for example, because vital records are held in archives in present-day Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia or Israel and obtaining information there takes a long time — should start the process now, not in 2030.

We will discuss the details of the individual case groups in depth in the contribution to Acquisition of German citizenship by declaration according to § 5 of the Nationality Act (StAG).

Why parentage cases require legal assistance

Applications under Art. 116(2) of the Basic Law, § 15 of the Nationality Act or § 5 of the Nationality Act are not formal procedures. They are genealogical reconstructions that must be substantiated with legal arguments — typically they include:

• Certificates of personal status from several states, partly from archives whose holdings were destroyed or relocated during the war (particularly sensitive with ancestors from Silesia, East Prussia, Galicia, Bukovina, or the Baltic States)
• Proof of the exact time of loss, the applied loss norm, and the uninterrupted chain of descent to the current applicant
• Legal categorisation, which of the three paths is relevant in the specific case — and in borderline cases the position parallel applications, so as not to miss a deadline
• Correspondence with the Federal Office of Administration in Cologne, which is responsible for all foreign applications and is currently working under a heavy workload

Lawyer Tieben represents descendants of German families from the USA, Israel, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Brazil, Australia and South Africa in these procedures – including the drafting of formal letters to the BVA, the requesting of archive information in Eastern Europe, and legal representation in cases where a strong claim has been unjustly rejected.

📞 Discuss family case: 0221 – 80187670 — or read our detailed guide to German citizenship by descent.