By Christine Stenner, Attorney (Germany) at Stenner Law| Foreign Legal Consultant (PA) | December 6, 2025
Documents Needed for a Declaration of German Citizenship Application
(Staatsangehörigkeitserwerb durch Erklärung)
The declaration process under section 5 of the German Nationality Act (StAG) allows people born after May 23, 1949 and their descendants, who were excluded from German citizenship because of gender-discriminatory laws, to acquire citizenship today. For instance, German mothers were not allowed to pass on their German citizenship when married to a foreigner until 1975.
Clients often ask which documents to provide for a successful application. Here is my answer.
- Proof of your identity
Submit a copy of your current foreign passport or identity card with your photo and personal data. Make sure your passport is signed. - Your birth documents
Provide your long form birth certificate that lists both parents. Short form certificates are not accepted because they don’t establish ancestry, which is central to German citizenship law. - Marriage and divorce documents
If you are married, include your marriage certificate.
If you have been divorced, include your divorce decree.
If you remarried, include certificates for later marriages. - Documents for your mother and proof of German citizenship in the family
Provide your mother’s German birth certificate. However, her German birth certificate alone is not enough to proof she was a german citizen because Germany does not list nationality on birth records. If available, include her old German passports, naturalization documents, Spätaussiedler documents, or other official evidence showing German citizenship. If this is not available, you must present her father’s birth certificate. If her father was born in Germany as well, this is a strong indicator that the family were German citizens. We help clients to obtain birth certificates in Germany. - FOIA request to USCIS for naturalization records
If your German mother lived in the United States, you must prove that she had not naturalized before your birth.
In my experience, some women never naturalized and you can show her green cards issued after your birth. However, most women did naturalize at some point. So this date matters! If you don’t have her U.S. naturalization certificate as original in your hands, you can request her immigration file under the United States Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It allows you to obtain government records held by USCIS. USCIS is the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency responsible for all immigration and naturalization records. A FOIA response may include naturalization certificates, alien registration files, immigration forms, or confirmation that no naturalization occurred.
Submit your FOIA request here:Note: Many applicants believe that German women always lost their citizenship when marrying foreign husbands before April 1, 1953. This is not correct for marriages to American citizens. German law at that time states that if the woman would have become stateless through this marriage, the loss did not occur because German law did not allow creating statelessness. Relevant is therefore only the date she voluntarily obtained U.S. citizenship through naturalization.
- Special family documents if relevant
Include adoption decrees, paternity acknowledgments or court orders, divorce judgments, and name-change documents when these events apply to your case. - Criminal background certificate
Provide acriminal background certificate from your country of residence. It must be national in scope and not older than six months. For clients in the United States, this means an FBI background check. Because it is valid only for a six month, and applications can take up to two years or more, we never file it with the initial submission. We provide the background check only when prompted by the Bundesverwaltungsamt (BVA). - Certified copies and translations
We avoid submitting originals and instead provide certified copies. There is no governmental fee for the document certification as part of the application because it corrects discrimination affecting earlier generations. Original documents must be certified at a German consulate or by an honorary consul. Honorary consuls often have faster availability for these services. They can be found through the German Federal Foreign Office’s directory of missions abroad, which lists all consulates and honorary consuls by region: - Official form for the declaration
Use the official Erklärung zum Erwerb der deutschen Staatsangehörigkeit form provided by the Bundesverwaltungsamt. The form has an English translation help but the German part has to be filled out and needs to be submitted. It can be downloaded here:
About the author
Christine Stenner is a German attorney with 25+years of experience. She is admitted to practice German law in the United States and focuses exclusively on German citizenship law for clients living abroad. At STENNER LAW, she assists applicants with restoring or reclaiming German citizenship through declaration, re-naturalization, and restitution-based applications.
