naturalisation
noun · Einbürgerung
Naturalisation is the Einbürgerung, the acquisition of German citizenship by administrative act on application; the calque Naturalisierung has no home in nationality law. The clocks moved twice: the 2024 reform cut the entitlement track of § 10 StAG from eight to five years and accepted dual citizenship as the rule, and the 2025 amendment struck the three-year fast track again, so the date of a text decides which rules it describes.
Which translation, when
Why
Naturalisation translates as Einbürgerung, the acquisition of German citizenship by administrative act on application, and the entry has two centres of gravity, the word and the clock. The word first: German nationality law says Einbürgerung, and the machine-made Naturalisierung, comfortable as it looks beside the English term, lives in biology and in older literature, not in the StAG; citizenship itself is the Staatsangehörigkeit, with Staatsbürgerschaft as the everyday doublet, and acquisition by birth, § 4 StAG, stands apart from acquisition durch Einbürgerung. The tracks matter next. The Anspruchseinbürgerung of § 10 StAG carries an entitlement, five years of lawful habitual residence plus the statutory catalogue, a secured livelihood, German at B1, the naturalisation test, the commitment to the free democratic basic order with the loyalty declaration, a clarified identity and no disqualifying convictions; § 8 StAG holds the discretionary route, and § 9 StAG the spouse track, three years of residence on two years of marriage to a German. And then the clock, because it has moved twice in short order: the modernisation act in force since 27.6.2024 cut the § 10 residence requirement from eight to five years, dropped the duty to give up the previous citizenship, making Mehrstaatigkeit the accepted rule, and created a three-year fast track for special integration achievements; the amendment act in force since 30.10.2025 struck that fast track without replacement, so the entitlement now runs on a uniform five years while dual citizenship, the B1 and test requirements and the loyalty declaration stand. The translation consequence is dating discipline: a source written between mid-2024 and late 2025 may present the three-year track as current law, and a faithful German rendering of an outdated claim needs the translator to see the date before the reader mistakes the rule.
Typical mistakes
- Naturalisierung belongs to biology and older literature, the nationality-law term is Einbürgerung.
- The three-year fast track of the 2024 reform was struck again in late 2025, so texts presenting it as current law are dated, the entitlement runs on five years.
- Dual citizenship is the accepted rule since the 2024 reform, so a rendering that still demands giving up the old citizenship describes the law before it.
What matters
For a citizenship information sheet or application letter heading into German, the translation should say Einbürgerung, place the entitlement on the five-year clock of § 10 StAG with dual citizenship as the rule, and flag sources still built on the abolished three-year track.
What the machine misses
A machine version of naturalisation tends towards Naturalisierung, a word German nationality law does not use, and towards outdated numbers around it; the institute is the Einbürgerung, since the 2024 reform on a five-year clock with dual citizenship accepted as the rule, and with the three-year fast track of 2024 abolished again in 2025, so the date of a text decides which rules it describes.
Examples
| naturalisation | Einbürgerung |
| to apply for naturalisation | die Einbürgerung beantragen |
| acquisition of citizenship by naturalisation | Erwerb der Staatsangehörigkeit durch Einbürgerung |
| dual citizenship is accepted | Mehrstaatigkeit wird hingenommen |