Germany citizenship through a great-grandparent
There is no generational cap in Section 4 itself, so a great-grandparent connection is not automatically closed the way it would be in the UK or Spain — but three generations of chain-break risk is a heavy lift under the ordinary descent rule. If the great-grandparent's citizenship was lost to Nazi-era persecution rather than a later voluntary move abroad, Section 15 restitution is usually the stronger and cleaner route at this depth.
Ordinary descent (Section 4) has no fixed depth limit, but requires proving citizenship survived intact through three links, each vulnerable to the naturalisation-abroad break test and the historical sex-discrimination gaps.
Section 15 restitution reaches any depth and is not defeated by a persecuted ancestor naturalising elsewhere afterward — a structural advantage over standard descent, since many Nazi-era refugees did naturalise in their new country.
The two routes need different evidence: descent needs an unbroken civil-records chain; restitution needs proof the great-grandparent was a German citizen stripped of citizenship, or fled in reasonable fear, between 1933 and 1945.
Establish first whether the great-grandparent's departure from Germany was persecution-related — this decides which of the two routes to actually pursue.
For a persecution case: request records from the German federal or state archives (Bundesarchiv/Landesarchiv) on the citizenship-stripping or expulsion.
For an ordinary descent case: the naturalisation-date checks now have to clear three generations — verify each independently before investing in the full document chain.
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