Since June 2024 you can usually keep your previous citizenship when you naturalise in Germany. What the law says and what your country of origin decides.
Until June 2024, the rule in Germany was that you gave up your previous citizenship when you naturalised. There were exceptions, but they were exceptions. Since then it is the other way round: holding more than one citizenship is the normal case.
This is not an internal guideline or an administrative practice. It is in the law itself. In the list of naturalisation requirements in section 10 of the German Nationality Act, the former number 4 — giving up your previous citizenship — is now simply marked as repealed.
Many guides online are older than this change and were never updated. If a page tells you that you must surrender your passport, check the date it was written.
If you naturalise, you no longer have to give up the citizenship you already hold. The requirement has been removed from the law.
This applies no matter which country you come from. The former special rules for EU citizens, Swiss nationals or recognised refugees no longer matter — they were exceptions to a rule that no longer exists.
The change cuts both ways. The provision under which German citizens lost their citizenship by acquiring a foreign one has also been repealed.
So a German who additionally acquires another citizenship no longer needs prior permission to retain the German one.
German law only governs the German side. Whether you actually keep your previous citizenship also depends on the law of the country that granted it.
Some states withdraw their citizenship automatically the moment someone acquires another. Others require you to apply in order to keep it. Others again allow both without any formality.
The German naturalisation authority cannot answer this question. The embassy or consulate of your country of origin can — and it is worth asking before you naturalise, not after.
The form asks for both: the citizenship you hold now, and whether you previously held a different one. If you hold several, separate them with commas.
You do not have to justify keeping them anywhere. The question about giving one up is simply no longer part of the form.
What remains is the application itself. It runs to ten pages and asks about previous marriages, all your children, both parents, every place you have lived since birth, and your income in seventeen separate categories.
AmtWerk asks you for these details as plain questions in your own language and enters them, in German, into the official form of your federal state. At present that is North Rhine-Westphalia.
Last updated: 05.09.2026
AmtWerk is a form-filling aid, not legal advice. Whether your previous citizenship survives under the law of your country of origin is a question for its embassy or consulate; your naturalisation application is decided solely by the competent German naturalisation authority.