German citizenship by descent — three routes, one deadline

German citizenship law offers unusually generous routes for descendants — including one with a hard deadline of 19 August 2031 and one, for families persecuted by the Nazi regime, with no deadline at all.

2-minute anonymous interview — no real names or documents needed.

Automatic descent

You may already be German without knowing it. Broadly: children of a married German father (any year), a married German mother (births from 1975), or an unmarried German mother acquired citizenship automatically at birth. The chain passes down the generations — but watch for the classic chain-breaker: an ancestor who voluntarily naturalised elsewhere before 27 June 2024 generally lost German citizenship at that moment.

The §5 declaration — deadline 19 August 2031

Historic German law discriminated by gender: before 1975 a German mother married to a foreign father usually couldn't pass citizenship on, and before July 1993 an unmarried German father couldn't either. The §5 StAG declaration fixes this for people born after 23 May 1949 who missed out this way — and their descendants. It's a declaration, not a naturalisation: no language test, no fees, but the window closes permanently on 19 August 2031.

Restoration for victims of Nazi persecution

Under Article 116(2) of the Basic Law and §15 StAG, descendants of people stripped of German citizenship between 1933 and 1945 on political, racial, or religious grounds — including Jewish refugees — can have citizenship restored. There is no deadline, no language requirement, and naturalisation elsewhere doesn't break these claims.

Documents you'd need

• Proof of your ancestor's German citizenship: passport, citizenship certificate, or population-register extracts
• German civil birth and marriage records (Standesamt)
• Emigration and naturalisation dates and papers — the chain-breaker question
• For the persecution route: expatriation lists, refugee or restitution documents

Frequently asked questions