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I am now a naturalized German citizen.

I went to the consulate this morning, where I signed a form and was told some things of varying usefulness, then, and now have the official naturalization certificate. The things I was told include that if I want to visit Germany I will need to get a German passport, that from now on they will be dealing with me entirely in German and it would be a good idea to learn some, and the much less important fact Germans write dates day-month-year. The man who was explaining this pointed at the paperwork, and realized that today isn't a useful example, being 2/2. The paperwork he gave me included a couple of pages about German data protection law: he said "we feel strongly about this" and I told him I agree with them. (I think I can file that mentally as "the GDPR applies.")

The man also gave me a lapel pin with the German and American flags, as appropriate to a dual citizen.

I came home, had lunch, and played Scrabble with

cattitude. And now I am going to dive back into the Social Security disability questionnaire.

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Email from our contact at the German embassy: she has forwarded the documents "to the competent citizenship authority in Germany (Federal Office of Administration)." She adds that she will contact me and my brother as soon as there is any update on the applications, and that the processing time for such applications is currently about 12-18 months.

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german citizenship

I finished filling out the form this afternoon, after re-copying one page several times because of annoying small errors (like "December" instead of "November"). I'd stopped to take a break after finishing that page, then picked the file up again and saw that all I needed to do was check a couple of boxes, and sign and date the form.

I did that, scanned the file, and sent it our contact at the German embassy in London. (We're going through the embassy in London rather than the consulate in Boston because that's where my mother lives.)

I sent copies to my mother (who gave me a lot of the information for this) and my brother (so he can use it).

I've been spending a lot of time lately on application forms, some more complicated than others.

Current Mood: nervous

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I now have the date my grandparents were naturalized. I emailed my cousin Anne yesterday, because Mom thought my aunt Lea and my grandparents were naturalized at the same time, and before my mother, because Lea was still under 18 and could be included on her parents application. Anne said that didn't match her recollection, and offered to have Dave (Lea's widower) see what he could find.

I mentioned this to Adrian, who told me where to find US naturalization records online.* It turns out that my grandparents were naturalized a few months after my mother, who came here several years before they did, and became a US citizen about a month after her 21st birthday.

Anne also asked why I'm putting in the application, if it wasn't too long to explain. The shortest answer, which I gave her, is "Trump scared me," I described applying for German citizenship as being like buying an insurance policy you hope never to use.

*Conveniently for my purposes, the records for that period for the eastern district of New York state are searchable online, though the southern district isn't. When Adrian asked which federal court district New York City is in, I said "southern" without thinking. Then I decided to check whether that had been true in 1951-52: the districts haven't changed, but Brooklyn and Manhattan are in different districts. My mother's family lived in Brooklyn, which is in the eastern district, and those records are online and searchable. Once in a while it's relevant that New York City is divided into five counties.

ETA Feb. 23: I sent my mother a draft of an email to the German embassy about this. She sent back a couple of changes, which I'm going to make, and asked me to hold off until the weekend so she can check the documentation on something rather than going from memory.

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I made an appointment for

adrian_turtle and

cattitude to look at another apartment in Somerville, this afternoon. They liked it enough that we have asked for a rental application.

cattitude urged me to look at the topo map before deciding; I poked at mappedometer, and the elevation graph shows a 1/16 slope up to Highland Avenue, and 1/25 down to Summer Street. [Those are relevant because there are useful buses on both streets, the 88 and 90 on Highland and the 87 on Summer.)

I'm saying "I think" because the landlord could turn us down, or we could look at the lease and find something problematic enough that we need to back out, as happened with the first place we looked at, several weeks ago.

Meanwhile, I talked to my mother this afternoon, and asked about the email I sent her about ten days ago, asking about where her parents had lived, and when my grandmother became a German citizen and, later, when she and my grandfather were naturalized as US citizens. It turns out that she'd written a nice long reply to my questions, and accidentally sent it to herself instead of to me. I now have lots of information, a couple of questions for our contact at the German embassy in London, and maybe one for my cousin Anne. (This is for German citizenship.)

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My mother has heard from the German embassy about my (and my brother's) citizenship. The person there sent a form she wants us to fill out, which isn't the form I carefully filled out in German and gave my mother to submit. This form is in English, which will be easier--the annoying part is that I filled this form out last year, then looked at the website, thought (mistakenly) that I needed to fill out a different form, and threw away the first one.

This looks straightforward, and the person at the embassy clearly wants to help. She made sure to say that we can scan the completed form and send her that, not mail the hardcopy. The (small) annoying part is that I already did this, then recycled that form, because normally "application form I don't need" isn't a thing worth keeping.

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My mother left this afternoon--I went with her to the airport, where I asked for and got a gate pass so I could accompany her and have a little more time together. She could have managed on her own, but I know she benefited from having me there to tell her what people had just said.

It was a very good visit, though I am somewhat tired, and

cattitude moreso. He and my mother both love, and like, each other, this was mostly about having had someone here from Tuesday afternoon through Saturday afternoon.

On Wednesday, I got notarized photocopies of my birth certificate and passport, to accompany my (re)naturalization application. Most of the questions were straightforward, but she had me email one of her oldest friends to ask the name of the town where my mother and her family lived in France in 1939-40. There are also a couple of questions where we decided the right answer is for my mother to go to the German embassy in London with the not-quite-completed form and ask them what to put there--including at what point in the Nazi regime my mother and her family lost their citizenship.

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Today's mail brought me two certified copies of my birth certificate, from the New York City Department of Health.

Two so I can just give them to the German consulate, once I've gotten copies of my mother's relevant paperwork (which we'll have to get notarized). Though if I'm going to a notary anyhow, I might keep one of these, make one photocopy, and have that notarized.

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This afternoon, I ordered certified copies of my birth certificate from New York City, and wool socks from sierra.com, and have closed both those tabs, which feels like a lot right now. But I will have warm feet, and I won't have to worry about the hours that the bank with my safe deposit box is open.

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This feels a little weird, but:

Germany will restore the citizenship of people who were deprived of German citizenship by the Nazis, and give citizenship to those people's descendants (mostly Jewish* Holocaust survivors and their descendants). That used to be only the children of German fathers, but sometime last year they changed that, and I stumbled across an article about it a few weeks ago.

I don't speak German, and don't want to move to Germany, but it would be an EU passport, and after the last few years, that feels like valuable insurance.

The German government's website has a form to use for "restoration of citizenship." They explicitly say that you don't have to use the form, but that it will help them find the records to prove eligibility.

I'm putting together a list of documents and information that I'm going to be asking my mother for. I'm also going to want help from someone who speaks German--the form is in German, and must be filled out in German, and Google translate is fine for "what's the German for January?" but not for things that need a little context. In particular, do they want every change of address, or is "I lived in New York City from the time I was born until 1985" sufficient?

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Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Don't mourn, organize

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German naturalization process

we think we've found a place

German citizenship paperwork

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