Hi again!
Ive been living in Berlin for a while and recently discovered I may have a strong claim to German citizenship through my maternal grandmother. Wanted to get thoughts from people who've been through the process.
I wrote here a few weeks ago and it helped SO much, since then I have obtained all documents in original format and I am ready to submit.
The family chain:
My grandmother was born in 1923 in the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia) and was a confirmed West German citizen — she has a Federal Republic passport issued in London in 1953. She later married a British man in 1956 and registered as British, losing her German citizenship at that point.
My mother was born in 1952 in the UK — out of wedlock to my grandmother, before the marriage. Father column on the English birth certificate is blank. The Federal Republic of Germany issued my mother a Kinderausweis listing her nationality as Deutscher. She was adopted in England in the early 1960s (pre-1977 threshold) and acquired British citizenship automatically at birth — she never naturalised.
I was born in London in 1993 to my mother.
Documents we have:
Grandmother's West German passport (1953)
Grandmother's Czechoslovak birth certificate
Grandmother's German adoption papers
Mother's English birth certificate (father column blank)
Mother's Kinderausweis listing nationality as Deutscher
English adoption order (pre-1977)
My own birth certificate
The question:
Someone suggested § 5 StAG (Erklärungserwerb) may not be the right route and is pointing toward § 4 Feststellungsverfahren instead — essentially arguing my mother never lost her German citizenship, which would make me German at birth.
Has anyone been through the Feststellungsverfahren? Is it through LEA? My biggest fear is going through the wrong route and missing the 2031 deadline.
Any help would be great!!!