German Citizenship by Descent

§4 StAG — Feststellung (Regular Descent)

The default route for people with a German citizen parent (or grandparent whose child was born before they naturalized abroad). §4 StAG requires an unbroken chain — each ancestor in the chain must have held German citizenship at the moment the next generation was born. Fee: €51 per person, payable after approval. Allow 2–3 years — the expectation the German missions publish, not a measured average — no authority publishes one.

§5 StAG — Gender-Discrimination Declaration

A 2021 law created four statutory categories of people who were denied German citizenship by pre-1975 gender rules — notably, descendants of German mothers who lost citizenship by marrying a foreigner before 1953, or who could not pass citizenship to children born in wedlock before 1975. Filed by declaration (not Feststellung), no need to prove an unbroken chain, and FREE. Deadline: August 19, 2031.

Art. 116(2) Basic Law — Restitution

A constitutional right to restoration for former German citizens who had their citizenship taken from them between January 30, 1933 and May 8, 1945 on political, racial or religious grounds — "und ihre Abkömmlinge", and their descendants, in the words of Art. 116(2) itself. The grounds are the gate: a deprivation on political, racial or religious grounds is inside Art. 116(2), which is how Jewish families, political opponents, Roma and Sinti and persecuted religious groups come within it. No deadline and no fee. The §4(4) generation cut-off does not apply to it: §4(4) Satz 4 disapplies that rule for an Art. 116(2) Basic Law claim and a §15 StAG claim — §4(4) Satz 4 disapplies it for those two claims themselves. If your ancestor fled but was never formally deprived, the route is not Art. 116(2) — it is §15 StAG, the restitution route for people persecuted on the same grounds but not formally deprived. It has FOUR limbs, and only the fourth is about residence: Nr. 1 gave up or lost German citizenship BEFORE 26 FEBRUARY 1955; Nr. 2 were excluded from acquiring it by marriage, legitimation or collective naturalisation; Nr. 3 were refused naturalisation after applying, or were generally excluded from it; Nr. 4 gave up or lost a habitual residence in Germany, whether established before 30 January 1933 or, as a child, after that date too. Nr. 2 and Nr. 3 reach people who never held German citizenship at all, so ‘never formally taken away’ is too narrow a summary of the route. No processing figure is published for either: not officially published.

One central adjudicator — if you live outside Germany

Every German citizenship by descent application — whether §4, §5, or Art. 116(2) — is decided by the Bundesverwaltungsamt in Cologne. There is no consulate jurisdiction map, and the consulate is not the only way in: BVA presents filing direct and filing through a mission as alternatives, and also runs an online service on the federal Bundesportal. A mission forwards documents; it does not decide eligibility.

Dual citizenship is now permitted (since June 27, 2024)

The StARModG reform of 2024 legalized dual citizenship for Germans. You may keep your US passport. §25 was repealed — the section number is still in the Act, but the text under it is gone. §17(1) StAG now lists only three ways to lose German citizenship — renunciation (§26), voluntarily joining the armed forces of a foreign state whose citizenship you already hold, or taking concrete part in a terrorist organisation's combat operations abroad (§28), and withdrawal of an unlawful administrative act (§35) — and acquiring another nationality is not among them. What the repeal does not do is give anything back: a loss that had already taken effect stays in place.

The text of §25 in each era, in German with our translation, is quoted on the dual-citizenship reform page. Start the free eligibility check →

Three deadlines of three kinds

§4 StAG has no filing deadline, but §4(4) carries a one-year registration deadline where the German parent was born abroad after December 31, 1999 and lives abroad — note the date attaches to the parent's birth, not the child's. §5 StAG has a hard August 19, 2031 deadline to file the declaration, and what has to happen by then is receipt at the Bundesverwaltungsamt — not the postmark, and not lodgement at a consulate. Art. 116(2) has no deadline at all.