German nationality law
"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.
[8] 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.
[9] Following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806,[6] 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that became part of the French-led Confederation of the Rhine, though any applicable legislation from this period was repealed in the 1810s shortly after French defeat in the Napoleonic Wars.
[11] 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.
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.
[17] These interstate treaties additionally clarified the position of persons with unclear status, who were granted the contemporary existing citizenship of their birthplace (if that was uncertain, then the place where they were found).
[27] Former Confederation members Liechtenstein (closely aligned with Austria) and Luxembourg (permanently neutral under the 1867 Treaty of London and in personal union with the Netherlands) continued as independent states outside of the German Empire.
[30] The concept of a German nationality based on ethnicity and descent became a core principle in the 1913 Imperial and State Citizenship Act (Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz).
[31] While prior regulations had maintained preexisting models of state membership through residency, this law made descent from German heritage the primary qualification for nationality.
[37] Colonial subjects (Schutzgebietsangehörige) held an unclearly defined legal status and were never granted German nationality at large.
[46] In the subsequent years, Jews were progressively excluded from participation in German society with ever more restrictive regulations prohibiting their activity in core sectors of the economy.
[49][50] Jews were specifically barred from holding Reich citizenship,[49] and they (along with Romanis) formally lost their right to vote in German elections on 7 March 1936.
[52] All remaining German Jews who were permanently domiciled overseas were denaturalised under the Eleventh Decree to the Reich Citizenship Act on 27 November 1941 and lost their status as state subjects.
[55] Sudeten Germans living in the Sudetenland also automatically became Reich citizens when Germany annexed that territory following the Munich Agreement on 29 September 1938.
[57] In the remaining Czech territory that was incorporated into Germany as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939, Reich citizenship was only granted automatically to members of the Sudeten German Party.
Although Protectorate subjects did not hold citizenship and were excluded from employment in the government and armed forces, discriminatory policies based on Czech ancestry were never adopted to the same degree as they were for Jews.
[58] In fact, any Protectorate subject who had even distant German ancestry could apply for Reich citizenship, provided that they were willing to undergo a process of Germanisation and were not of Jewish descent.
[62] Austria was reestablished as a separate sovereign state on 27 April 1945 and any person of Austrian origin would have ceased to hold German citizenship from that date.
[63] Ethnic Germans in post-war Czechoslovakia were deprived of their Czechoslovak citizenship under the Beneš decrees, and more than 2.8 million affected people were deported to Germany.
[70] Following a general trend of anti-communist movements in Eastern Europe beginning in 1989, the Peaceful Revolution began the process of German reunification.
Initial cooperation was focused on the economy through the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation as a condition for receiving aid from the United States provided by the Marshall Plan.
The post-war political situation created the circumstances that facilitated the establishment of further organisations to integrate Western Europe along common social and security policies.
[77] West German citizens participated in their first European Parliament elections in 1979[78] and have been able to work in other EC/EU countries under the freedom of movement for workers established by the 1957 Treaty of Rome.
[80] With the creation of European Union citizenship by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, free movement rights were extended to all nationals of EU member states regardless of their employment status.
[81] The scope of these rights was further expanded with the establishment of the European Economic Area in 1994 to include any national of an EFTA member state except for Switzerland,[82] which concluded a separate free movement agreement with the EU that came into force in 2002.
[84] A growing number of migrant workers had children who were born in Germany, educated domestically, and later employed in the country but still held foreign nationality despite their long periods of residence and assimilation.
[36] More substantial changes were adopted in 1999, when birthright citizenship was introduced for children born since 1 January 2000 to noncitizen immigrants who had resided in Germany for at least eight years.
[85] Requirements for naturalisation candidates were further relaxed in the 1999 reform as well; the residence requirement was reduced from 15 to eight years and immigrants from other EU countries or Switzerland no longer needed to renounce their previous citizenship before acquiring German nationality, provided that the relevant country reciprocated this treatment in its respective nationality law.
Applicants must demonstrate B1 proficiency in the German language, pass a citizenship test, declare loyalty to a free and democratic system, prove their self-sufficiency without state assistance, and hold no criminal record.
In January 2024, the Bundestag passed a draft law that provides for the following reforms, among others: The Federal Council decided on 2 February 2024 not to call on the Mediation Committee (German: "Vermittlungsausschuss").
