German nationality law
German nationality law details the conditions by which an individual is a national of Germany. The primary law governing these requirements is the Nationality Act, which came into force on 1 January 1914. Germany is a member state of the European Union and all German nationals are EU citizens. They have automatic and permanent permission to live and work in any EU or European Free Trade Association country and may vote in elections to the European Parliament.
Any person born to a married German parent is typically a German national at birth, regardless of the place of birth. Children of unmarried couples in which only the father is German must be legitimised for them to acquire German nationality. Individuals born in Germany to two foreign parents may also receive German nationality at birth if at least one of their parents has lived in the country for five years and is entitled to live in the country indefinitely. Foreign nationals may naturalise after residing in Germany for at least five years and demonstrating knowledge in the German language.
Germany is composed of territory historically part of the Holy Roman Empire and German Confederation that was separated into numerous small German states whose residents held citizenship of their locality. Over the course of the 19th century, the various German states moved towards integration into a single entity that culminated with the unification of Germany in 1871. German citizenship was generally held by virtue of being a citizen of a German state, and state citizenship remained a principally important concept in German law until the country's transition to Nazi rule.
Between 1933 and 1945, any person considered "undesirable" by the state was stripped of their civil and political rights and targeted for denaturalisation. Any person deprived of their German citizenship during this time based on political, racial, or religious grounds, as well as their direct descendants, are eligible to reclaim German citizenship at any time. Following the end of the Second World War, Germany was split into West Germany and East Germany. While West Germany continued to enforce existing pre-war nationality legislation and claimed all East Germans as its citizens, East Germany adopted a separate nationality law in 1967 which remained in force until German reunification in 1990.
Terminology
The distinction between the meaning of the terms citizenship and nationality is not always clear in the English language and differs by country. Generally, nationality refers a person's legal belonging to a country and is the common term used in international treaties when referring to members of a state; citizenship refers to the set of rights and duties a person has in that nation. It can be possible for a non-national to obtain a degree of civil and political rights commonly associated with citizenship while it is also possible for a national to be prohibited from exercising certain rights. In German, the term "nationality" refers to state membership while "citizenship" describes a person's participation in national society.Decentralised development
Until the early 19th century, German lands constituted the core part of the highly decentralised Holy Roman Empire. Each of the roughly 1,800 individual political entities within the Empire had varying definitions on who they considered to be members of their polity. "Citizenship" in this context was tied to a person's settlement in a particular municipality and individuals found outside of their ordinary places of residence could be deported to other parts of imperial territory.The modern concept of citizenship, as a formal and legal relationship between an individual and a state that confers privileges to holders and a status that persists beyond continued territorial residence, emerged during the French Revolution. Following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, this model of citizenship was imported into the German territories that became part of the French-led Confederation of the Rhine, though any applicable legislation from this period was repealed in the 1810s shortly after French defeat in the Napoleonic Wars. Outside of this Confederation, Austria enacted its first codified regulations based on the modern citizenship concept in 1811.
As a result of the Congress of Vienna, the German Confederation was created in 1815 as a permanent replacement for the Holy Roman Empire and included virtually all of the former Empire's territory. This political structure was not a federal state and sovereign power remained with the 38 individual member states. Each state continued to hold jurisdiction over citizenship, but the vast majority of them passed no specific codified laws on the subject until the mid-19th century. Prussia enacted its first citizenship law in 1842. Other than through naturalisation, Prussian citizenship was only passed by descent from a Prussian father.
Confederal policy alignment
Any applicable contemporary legislation in the Confederation was inconsistent among the states and generally ineffectual at determining the citizenship of a particular person. State regulations often assumed the existence of some type of citizenship that a child would inherit from their father at the time of their birth. However, any person born in the 18th century who would have been a citizen of an area of the Holy Roman Empire that no longer existed as a political entity would have had an undefined status in state law.Conversely, every state had concluded by the 1820s at least one treaty with some or all other members of the Confederation that detailed the deportation of undesirable persons without state citizenship and process of "implicit naturalisation". A German who resided in another state for at least 10 years was considered to have been naturalised implicitly in their new place of domicile. An implicitly naturalised father would have automatically passed his changed citizenship status to his entire family. In seven states, this process was extended to any alien who fulfilled the minimum residence requirement. These interstate treaties additionally clarified the position of persons with unclear status, who were granted the contemporary existing citizenship of their birthplace. Germans lost their state citizenship if they left state territory with the intent to reside elsewhere permanently, had obtained formal permission to emigrate, or otherwise continuously lived outside of their home state for at least 10 years.
Theoretically, the Constitution of the German Confederation created a common German nationality. Article 18 of the document detailed a set of basic rights for every German; any subject of a German state was entitled to freely purchase property in any part of the Confederation, emigrate to other states willing to admit them, enlist in another state's armed forces or civil service, and were exempt from a tax on emigration. In practice, the member states did not permit Germans from other states to freely immigrate into their territories, rendering these constitutional rights generally moot. The Frankfurt Parliament expanded on this idea of a unified German nationality; any state citizen of the short-lived 1848–1849 German Empire was also a German national, and all German nationals held the same rights as citizens of any German state.
Multilateral negotiations among the states resumed after the German Confederation was reconstituted in 1849. Prussia and 20 other states agreed on the Gotha Treaty in 1851, which lowered the residence requirement for implicit naturalisation to five years and introduced a formal distinction between emigration to other German states and emigration to jurisdictions outside of the Confederation. All German states had acceded to this treaty by 1861.
Unification and imperial law
The Confederation was dissolved in 1866 as a consequence of the Austro-Prussian War. Prussia formed a new union, the North German Confederation, consisting of all the German states north of the Main. Four southern states remained independent until their accession to the union during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. Prussia's 1842 citizenship law served as the basis for federal nationality regulations, which were adopted that same year. The United States negotiated during this time a set of individual Bancroft Treaties with the North German Confederation and the four southern states for mutual recognition of each other's naturalised citizens.Following the North German victory against France, the Confederation was reformed into the German Empire in 1871. International bilateral agreements with the southern German states became superseded by imperial law. In the annexed region of Alsace–Lorraine, residents were allowed a choice between German and French nationalities. Individuals electing to remain French were required to permanently depart for France by 1 October 1872, although those who did not leave by then were allowed to remain, with German citizenship. Former Confederation members Liechtenstein and Luxembourg continued as independent states outside of the German Empire.
State citizenship remained principally important in almost all of Germany; imperial citizenship was held by virtue of holding state citizenship, which continued to be acquired in separate processes per state, and German passports listed a holder's nationality as Prussian, Bavarian, Saxon, or whichever label was applicable. However, because Alsatian-Lorrainers and white residents of German colonies were not domiciled in a federal state, they were simply "German".
The concept of a German nationality based on ethnicity and descent became a core principle in the 1913 Imperial and State Citizenship Act. While prior regulations had maintained preexisting models of state membership through residency, this law made descent from German heritage the primary qualification for nationality. Before the law's enactment on January 1, 1914, Germans who lived abroad for more than 10 years were automatically deprived of their nationality but after this reform, any former national who remained living overseas were able to apply for German nationality with no requirement to reestablish residence in Germany. Individuals who became nationals in this way were granted "direct imperial citizenship" rather than citizenship of any particular state. Germans could still be automatically denaturalised after extended residence overseas or obtaining another nationality, but this could be avoided by registering their intent to continue holding German citizenship at a German consulate.
Foreigners resident in Germany who held no criminal record, maintained their own housing, and provided for themselves and their families could apply for naturalisation. However, fulfilling the technical requirements did not give applicants the right to become German nationals. Final approval for a grant of nationality was given at the sole discretion of the imperial government, which was extremely restrictive in practice. Only applicants who had served for at least one year in the German military or those who were employed by the German government and had met the other naturalisation requirements were entitled to become German nationals by right.
Colonial subjects held an unclearly defined legal status and were never granted German nationality at large. Any children of mixed-race heritage had to be officially approved for "European" status, subject to detailed examination of an applicant's heritage, education, professional background, and social standing. Any other native resident of a German colony, or foreigners domiciled there, would have been required to naturalise to acquire German nationality.