I think you are eligible. You are lucky you are trying to claim through your paternal line. Also your Great grandfather emigrated after 1914, which is good. The “naturalized in 1937 as a minor with my great-grandfather” – I don’t think this will be an issue because he was a minor, but i’m not sure.

You might want to also ask your question on Reddit on the subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/GermanCitizenship/ (a community that has really grown in the last 6 months)

Or on one of the various facebook groups out there:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GermanCitizenship/comments/scjr6y/facebook_groups_related_to_recognition_of_german/

I’m not sure how the naturalization process works in Canada, but if your minor grandfather was automatically included in his father’s naturalization application (and there was no separate application of his own), I believe he would have retained his German citizenship, and it would have passed through your father to you (unless either of you voluntarily entered military service or something else along those lines). But a lot of it depends on which laws were in effect during particular years. Military enlistment now, for example, should be fine but it might not have been for your father or grandfather. Your best bet is to reach out to your closest German mission and let them know the specifics, especially about how your grandfather’s naturalization occurred.

As for documents, you might also need your grandfather’s German passport, your father’s birth certificate, your parents’ marriage certificate, and your own birth certificate. Hopefully others can chime in with more details or better feedback.

Great-grandfather

– born in 1886 in Germany
– emigrated to Canada 1920
– married feb 15th 1919 to a German
– naturalized 1937 in Canada with his children but at a different time than his wife

Grandfather

– born in 1919 in Germany
– emigrated to Canada in 1925
– married a Canadian woman in 1946
– naturalized in 1937 as a minor with my great-grandfather

Dad

– born 1962 in Canada
– married in 1990 to my mom Uk/Canadian

Me
– born 1996 in Canada
– currently have Canadian and Uk passports through my mom

The documents I currently have are:
Gf’s German birth certificate
Gf’s Canadian passport
Gf’s marriage certificate
GGf’s naturalization form

My grandfather naturalized with my GGf as a minor (17 years old)

Am I eligible to acquire my German citizenship and passport?

Happy New Year everyone! I’ve just activated a replacement plugin to manage post comment subscriptions. If you previously subscribed to comments on this post, you should start receiving notifications again (and you can unsubscribe in any email if this content is no longer of interest to you). Apologies again for the temporary removal of this feature until I could find a replacement that didn’t break the site. And best wishes to any of you still in the process of obtaining or proving your German citizenship. I hope you all get great news this year!

Congratulations Carrie!

Congratulations Carrie!

Thank you Jenn for making this post and for everyone who has commented, it has been really helpful. Especially for your encouragement about my grandfather’s missing birth certificate, which turned out to be no problem at all.

Now I get to apply for a passport. I think I will probably have to make a name declaration first — has anyone done this? I’m seeing that processing times for name declarations are 3+ months — anyone gotten this done recently?

Vielen danke!!!

To quickly recap everyone on our cases. We both were born in wedlock to a US father and German mother at the time of our births. I was born and registered in Germany – I discovered this last year. However, my brother was born in the US and only briefly lived in Germany as a small child, without being registered to our knowledge, after he was born (this is an important fact i’ll revisit below).

Things I’ve learned:

1. The birth registration of a child and the passport application are completely separate processes; one doesn’t rely on the other. My brother was told that he can expect a passport in 3 months and a birth registration from the small town he lived in in about 3-4 weeks. According to the consul the passport is useful for travel.
However, The birth registration is a legal document and is usually needed to complete any legal function within Germany (i.e. open bank accounts, rent, German drivers licence, voting etc…)

2. The controlling Standesamt is the last town the child lived in Germany even if the child was not born in Germany. My brother was born in the US and moved to a small German town as a child. My parents received whats called “kindergeld” at the time for him, and the town should have records of that, even if my parents don’t – according to the consul. If my brother would never have lived in Germany then Standesamt I in Berlin would be the controlling Standesamt. They have a processing time of 2-3 years on birth registrations currently.

3. This next point is long, but I can’t find anything online that mentions the process, so i’ll just spend some time and explain everything I remember. My passport photo was taken at Walgreens against a white wall. The person then plugged the SD card into the computer. The software is the exact same as shown in this image:
https://prod-cdn.thekrazycouponlady.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/how-to-coupon-walgreens88-1551497958.jpg
The person then selected “German” on the list of nationalities on the right of the screen, then scaled the image to fit my head into an oval border on the screen. After that she sent the images to another computer and did some minor color corrections. After this she printed the photos out without cutting them (per the consuls request).

When I went to the consul I got permission watch the software being used for taking fingerprints and verifying photos. The software looks exactly like this: https://youtu.be/K5rdzZhuXDc?t=151
She took the photos I got from Walgreens and scanned these in. The software automatically lets you know whether a picture of a person is acceptable or not. I saw a green oval around my face and green borders on the sides indicating that my picture was acceptable. The user can override a slightly unacceptable photo, but the consul said that this should never be done normally. Then came the fingerprints – simple enough.

4. The consul collected the simple copies of our documents and compared them with the originals. After the consul grabbed all the documents that were required, all the sheets were folded on the edge and stapled together. The folded edge then got the stamped by the consuls seal.

5. Apostilles and translations. I struck up a conversation and I was amazed how frank the consul became all of a sudden. In a nutshell, the consul was telling me that the Standesamts that required Apostilles and translations either didn’t speak English or that they don’t recognize the consuls authority to certify the documents; a frustration this consul has dealt with on numerous occasions. When this happens, the applicant has no choice but to go through the process of getting all their documents Apostilled and translated for the Standesamt; there is nothing the consul can do. The consul did tell me that fortunately this problem doesn’t come up very often.

The consul was super happy how organized I made all my documents; I put the originals and the copies in sheet protectors and put a sticky note on each sheet protector indicating what the document was. All of these sheets were put in a binder.

I did go overkill on my document collection, collecting back to my grandparents. It could have been a lot shorter of a process if I knew more before hand.

There are several other points I could make, but I’ll just leave it at that for now – too long; I might make a little follow up if anything else interesting comes to mind from my appointment.

It’s was a little bit of a mind shifting discovery that I might have dual citizenship 2 years ago. I spent all this time singularly focused on finding information, collecting documents and not getting ahead of myself. Now since I will get the passport in a matter of months, I don’t yet know the extent that I will utilize it; I still need to think about it. Either way i’m happy i’m discovering it, it’s certainly a privilege to have the opportunity to be a German citizen. Dual citizenship is it worth it? I think, YES!