Unwelcome Returns? (Re-)Naturalisation Rights of German Jews & Descendants

Article 116 Paragraph Two of the Basic Law (the German constitution of 1949) grants former German citizens whose citizenship was removed by the Nazi regime on the grounds of their Jewish ‘race’ the right to German citizenship upon application. This right is not restricted to the denaturalised individuals themselves, but also extends to their descendants. Yet during the over seventy-five years of the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany, there have been significant changes regarding which German Jews – and which groups of descendants – enjoyed that right to German citizenship. Drawing on previously unexamined material from archives throughout Germany, this talk reconstructs those developments, showing how antisemitic and former Nazi civil servants acted to restrict rights of German Jews in the 1950s and 1960s, establishing arbitrary exclusions that remained in force until the reform of the German Nationality Act in 2021.

Nicholas Courtman is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of History and the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at King’s College London. He is currently completing a five-year research project funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation as part of the Alfred Landecker Lecturer Programme entitled “Citizenship after Hitler: Continuity and Change in the Citizenship Law and Naturalisation Practice of the Federal Republic of Germany”.

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