I am considering applying for German citizenship as the child of a woman whose Jewish family fled Germany in 1939. (I will not comment on the irony of my reasons for taking this step.)
I have begun filling out the necessary forms and collecting the required documents, and am interested if anyone here has already been through this process or has any other insight into it.
Among my concerns:
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My command of German language is very limited.
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I’m 65, and not officially retired yet, but my business is winding down and I’ll have essentially no income for the next year. But I have several hundred thousand in retirement accounts, and I’ll be eligible for my full Social Security benefits in December 2021.
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My wife is employed fulltime as a school principal, but is 60, and has no German. I don’t know what her employment prospects might be in Germany. She has nearly 40 years of experience in Jewish day schools.
Questions:
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Are applicants denied for having insufficient language language skills or financial resources?
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Are we likely to be accepted? Do descendants of Jewish refugees get preferential treatment WRT to the above criteria or other considerations?
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Are there any tricks or pitfalls to the application process? Are there people or services that can help make sure it’s all done properly?
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How long does the process take?
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If we are approved, does the German Government offer any assistance with immigrating, e.g., locating housing, employment, etc.?
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What are the pros and cons of giving up U. S. citizenship?
Anything else I should know about? Thanks.
Since you are a descendant of a German Jewish family, my first idea was to contact the Jewish community in Germany for help. I’m sure there are people who can help with immigration to Germany, there have been many Jewish people from the former Soviet Union who emigrated to Germany in the last decades, so I’m sure there are experts for this kind of questions somewhere. First institution that came to mind is the Zentralrat der deutschen Juden, Central Council of Jews in Germany, and here’s their info page about immigration, sadly only in German. But you should contact them, English will be no problem.
Thanks for the suggestion, EH. I was hoping I might hear from you.
The position of the German state is that a lot of the Germans killed by the previous German state weren’t particularly religious in their Jewishness, and were killed before they had surviving direct descendants. So Jews who are accepted into Germany as part of restorative justice don’t have to be particularly religious either, nor particularly German.
I am wondering whether your history will entitle you to immediate German citizenship. The reason I mention this is that my wife has a friend who was not making it here and moved to Germany. She was a German citizen and her mother tongue was German, although her English (and probably her French) had native fluency. In fact, she moved to the town where she had been born. Anyway, the Government set her up with an apartment and an allowance and helped her find a job. At first she was teaching German to refugees, but has since settled into teaching English. She is now doing very well, but the government was extremely helpful.
Giving up US citizenship is not a step to be taken lightly. The downside of keeping is the hassle with taxes and banks that don’t to deal with US citizens.
I have almost no doubt about that. The German state is very welcoming to people who had German ancestors reaching far further back than the parent’s generation, and Jewish people per se are very welcomed to Germany by the government (I stress, by the government, I’m not always so sure about the people, I don’t want to deny that antisemitism is still a societal problem that maybe has been growing in the last years).
As for general naturalization requirements: here’s the site of the ministry of home affairs with basic informations and requirements. You have to demonstrate a basic command of the German language as well as an understanding of the political system of the Federal Republic. I think this is both tested in written tests.
I just spoke with someone else who has been through this process recently, and in that conversation it came out that I probably have another advantage I didn’t realize: my first cousin (son of my mother’s sister) obtained German citizenship this way many years ago. So all the research and paperwork needed to prove that my mother’s family fled during the war, and that their Jewish heritage was the reason why they lost their citizenship, has been done. I should be able to refer in my application to my cousin’s successful one and speed the process.
Looks like you want to invoke Article 116 of the Basic Law. Here’s the English information sheet.
Especially since a family member has already been accepted, this should merely be a formality. They do require you give up your American (or other) citizenship though, unless special circumstances apply.
Good find, kk_fusion. I was sure there had to be such a law, but I didn’t know that it’s even a constitutional law.
Thanks, kk_fusion. I had found the application forms at the Web site, but that’s a longer and more detailed explanation than I had found.