Since 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany has allowed former citizens, whose citizenship was revoked by the Nazis due to their Jewish faith or ‘race’, to reclaim it. Yet, over the past 75 years, there have been significant changes regarding which German Jews – and which descendants – can enjoy that right. This talk tracks those developments, from the restrictive, often antisemitic decisions made in the 1950s, to attempts to uphold those regulations in the following decades, through to the 2021 reform of the German Nationality Act that finally redressed such exclusions.
Nicholas Courtman is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History and Languages at King’s College London, working on the Alfred Landecker-funded project ‘Citizenship after Hitler: Continuity and Change in German Citizenship Law’. He completed his PhD in German Studies at the University of Cambridge and previously worked at The Expert Council on Integration and Migration in Berlin, authoring a report on naturalisation practices for the German government. He has also served as an expert witness in two Bundestag hearings on reparative justice in citizenship law.
