Assessing the Consequences of the 1999 German Citizenship Act

Abstract

This special issue of German Politics and Society offers a retrospective look atthe German Citizenship Act (Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, StAG), which passed in1999 and came into force in 2000.1 The law was and continues to be understoodby many academics, policymakers, and lay commentators as constitutinga “paradigm shift” in German citizenship policy and, by extension,prevailing conceptions of German nationhood. The introduction of the lawof territory (jus soli), in particular, was greeted as a welcome acknowledgementof Germany’s de facto status as a modern immigration country. Childrenborn and raised in Germany would no longer be rendered permanentforeigners as a consequence of the dominance of the law of descent (jus sanguinis)in the Reichs- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz (RuStAG), 1913. Proponentsassumed that the reduction of the residency requirement for naturalizationwould also allow greater numbers of long settled immigrants to assume therights and privileges of German nationality. Just as importantly, Germanywould join the European mainstream as regarded citizenship policy. Thestigma associated with its traditionally ethnic conception of nationhoodwould give way to a more positive, civic identity.