st pauli wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:15 pm
Zerubbabel wrote: ↑Mon Feb 10, 2020 8:02 pm
I was born in 1985 and I believe my mother is a German citizen in the abstract sense
You need now to work towards demonstrating that in a concrete sense. I think the priority here would be to get your mother to claim her German citizenship by tracing the records. From that point, it will be automatic for you.
Ideally I was hoping it would be sufficient to demonstrate it via proof of the line of descent from her father to me, i.e. copies of birth certificates; and include that with my application, rather than asking my mother to apply for a German passport herself first. There is a time constraint here as I believe this is the last year (Brexit transition period) that anyone will be able to get German citizenship while retaining British.
No time constraint.
You are not applying for naturalisation, you already are a German citizen/dual national by birth (we hope). A passport is just documentary evidence of your existing citizenship, not having one does not make you not-German.
I think it would make things a lot easier if you and your mother would at least apply for passports at the same time (get ID cards, too while you are at it - you can travel with just that within the EU without having to lug your passport around), since you have not already had a German passport. You have to show that your mother really is German and she has to show that her father really was German.
A potential pitfall could be that there was some time period in which dual national-born children had to decide for one nationality at 21. I don't know when that was or whether they would apply this when applying for a first passport/ID card as an adult.
Do gather as many documents as you can ad talk to the Embassy, if possible. When I got a new ID card at the Consulate in Edinburgh, they were saying that loads of people were applying for first passports, so your case is not unusual.
If you can't find your grandfather's birth certificate, contact Standesamt 1 in Berlin. Although I think you'd at least have to know where your grandfather was born exactly.
You could apply for a determination of citizenship, but that would take quite some time and I would definitely not do that as a first step. The Embassy will tell you if that's required, usually when, at the time of a first passport application, they are not sure whether you are German or not.
The questions they ask might be helpful for you to determine what is required, especially regarding marriage certificates, naturalisation and joining the armed forces of a country that was not Germany:
https://australien.diplo.de/au-en/servi ... ip/2074756
I am not a regulated immigration advisor. I am offering an opinion and not advice.