Dual Citizenship Germany & USA: Yes, Allowed Since 2024

Yes. Since June 27, 2024, German law generally permits multiple citizenship, and the United States has long tolerated it. An American recognized as a German citizen by descent keeps the U.S. passport, and a German who naturalizes abroad no longer loses the German one.

For many years the position was the opposite. A German citizen who voluntarily acquired a foreign nationality lost their German citizenship automatically under the old §25 StAG. No exceptions. No grace period. No way around it.

That changed fundamentally when Germany's nationality-law reform, the Act to Modernise Nationality Law (Staatsangehörigkeitsmodernisierungsgesetz, StARModG), entered into force on June 27, 2024. Germans who acquire foreign citizenship no longer lose their German one. Foreigners naturalizing in Germany may keep their previous nationality. The old automatic-loss rule is gone entirely.

One limit is worth stating plainly, because it decides real family cases: the reform applies to events from June 27, 2024 onwards and is not retroactive. A German who naturalized in the United States in 1998 lost German citizenship on that day, and the 2024 reform does not hand it back.

On the American side, the U.S. State Department's long-standing position tolerates dual nationality for citizens who acquire a foreign citizenship, particularly through descent, which is a passive transmission rather than a voluntary foreign naturalization. The concern that held families back for years no longer exists.

No. The retention permit is no longer required. The German Federal Foreign Office puts it without qualification: German nationals may apply for any foreign nationality without giving up their German one, so it is no longer necessary to seek permission to retain a nationality.

The retention permit, in German a Beibehaltungsgenehmigung, belonged to the old law. Before June 27, 2024, a German who wanted to naturalize abroad and stay German had to apply for it in advance, show a continuing connection to Germany, and wait for a decision. Applying afterwards was impossible, because the German citizenship was already gone the moment the foreign one was granted.

Two groups still meet the term, and they must not be told the same thing. If you are claiming citizenship by descent, the permit is irrelevant to you: you are not acquiring a foreign nationality, you are having an existing German one recognized. If a German ancestor naturalized abroad before June 27, 2024 without a permit, the loss took effect then and stands, which is exactly why the date of an ancestor's naturalization decides so many cases. That is the forensic question at the heart of the chain of descent.

German citizenship passes by descent, not by birthplace. Under §4 StAG, a child born to a German parent is German at birth, wherever in the world that birth takes place. The law sets no generation limit. What matters is whether every link between your German ancestor and you held at the moment of each birth.

Three events break that chain. Voluntary naturalization abroad before April 1, 2000, which ended German citizenship under the old §25 StAG. Descent through a German mother married to a non-German father before July 1, 1975, when the law transmitted only through the father in a marriage. And further back, the ten-year rule that ran until 1904, under which a German who lived abroad for ten years without registering lost the citizenship by operation of law.

A broken chain is not automatically a closed case. §5 StAG created a declaration route for descendants excluded solely by the historic gender rules. §15 StAG opens a route for descendants of people persecuted between 1933 and 1945, with no generation limit and no deadline. Article 116 (2) of the Basic Law restores citizenship to those stripped of it under the Nazi regime, and to their descendants.

There are three doors, and choosing the wrong one costs months.

A passport application at your German consulate is the shortest route, and it works when the line is short and fully documented. The consulate is not deciding a legal question there; it is issuing a document to someone whose citizenship is already evident from the records.

A formal determination of citizenship, in German a Feststellung, is filed with the Federal Office of Administration (Bundesverwaltungsamt, or BVA) in Cologne. It uses application form F together with annex V for the ancestors, and annex K where children are included. This is the route when the chain needs a legal decision rather than a clerk's confirmation, and it ends in a certificate of citizenship (Staatsangehörigkeitsausweis), the document that settles the question permanently.

A declaration under §5 StAG is a separate procedure again, filed on the Federal Office of Administration's current form package. Always pull the current version from the BVA rather than reusing an older copy.

Which door applies is a question about your documents, not your preference. What the evidentiary file has to contain is worth understanding before anything is filed.

The government fee is the small part. The Federal Office of Administration charges 51 euros for a certificate of citizenship, and between 25 and 51 euros where an application is refused. That is the entire official price of the decision.

The real cost sits in the evidence: civil records from German registry offices (Standesämter) and archives, American naturalization files, and, for documents originating outside the United States, Canada or the EU, apostilles and sworn German translations. Records from the USA, Canada and EU states, Germany included, need neither.

One document sets the pace of the whole file, and it is the ancestor's naturalization record. The watershed in American cases is September 27, 1906. Naturalizations before that date sit with NARA, cost about ten dollars, and typically come back in two to three months. Naturalizations from 1906 onwards sit with USCIS and commonly take around two years.

Once filed, a determination case at the Federal Office of Administration enters a long passive phase, in the order of magnitude of two years. The status cannot usefully be chased: a file reference normally appears after a few months, and the authority comes back on its own initiative. Timelines vary by authority and by case, and no honest advisor can promise a date.

The families who wait longest are rarely waiting on an authority. They are waiting because a gap in the chain was left unresolved before submission.

Yes. Citizenship acquired by descent is not a personal privilege that stops with you. Once you are German, your children are German at birth under the same §4 StAG rule that made you German.

One provision ends that automatic transmission, and it carries a deadline with no repair route behind it. Under §4 (4) StAG, a child born abroad does not acquire German citizenship if the German parent was themselves born abroad after December 31, 1999 and has their habitual residence abroad. The single exception is a child who would otherwise be stateless.

The cure is administrative and short-lived. If an application to record the birth in the German birth register is filed within one year of the birth, under §36 of Germany's civil status act (Personenstandsgesetz), the child is German after all. Reaching the competent German mission within that year is enough to keep the deadline.

For most families reading this today the rule does not bite, because it applies only where the German parent was born in 2000 or later. It matters for the generation that follows. If you are recognized as German and your child is born abroad, register the birth. A year passes quickly, and German citizenship law offers very few deadlines this unforgiving.

Dual German citizenship is, as of June 2024, legally straightforward. Germany permits it. The U.S. tolerates it. The retention permit is history, and the old automatic-loss concerns are resolved.

What remains is the genealogical question. Whether your chain of transmission from your German ancestor to you is intact. Which statutory pathway best fits your family structure. Whether your case falls under standard §4 StAG descent, German citizenship by descent great-grandparent rules, or the reformed pathways under §5 StAG and §15 StAG.

Families whose German ancestors were stripped of citizenship during the Nazi era have a distinct constitutional route, Article 116 (2) GG restoration, which carries no generation limit and equally permits dual citizenship.

That is the starting point. And it begins with one honest conversation about your family.

Americans on the East Coast typically work with the German Consulate General in New York, while those on the West Coast file through the German Consulate General in San Francisco.