Thank you all for the valuable information. Before I ask my questions I wanted to answer Aviatrix question.

To my knowledge the town was pretty much destroyed. from what i have gathered it was mostly farmland, and eventually borders and town boundaries are redrawn. In speaking with my family the town does not show up on any current map, and my family being the US for so long has lost knowledge of surrounding towns or land marks to pinpont the last know location.


As for my questions:

1) Being in the US my knowledge is some what limited on finding a lawyer that specializes in this area? I am assuming I need to find one in Germany. is there any insights some one could lend?

2) There was a suggestion of parish registers. 757DUD are you potentially referring to the church where my grandparents were married? I have never thought of that and maybe if it still exists it could tell me the last known location of the town.

3) there has been reference to Polish citizenship but I am not sure I would qualify. My father's parents passed when I was very young and I believe all their children (my aunts and uncles) by now has obtained US citizenship. is there a "grand father " clause for Polish citizen ship?

@1
No idea, especially how to find a good one. Maybe google could help. There are some forums for expats in Germany. Maybe there you could find a recommendation
@2
Google. Another option would be a german atlas. It doesn't have to be very old. At least the ones from west germany had the german names for quite a long time.
@3 no idea, It was just a recommendation to think outside the box.

Have you tried googling the name of the town?

And... was it actually a TOWN, in the European sense, or was it what we would call a village (Dorf in German)? I believe that American English uses the word "town" to describe much smaller settlements, those that we would describe as a village.

I don't know the answer - but I do know that laws regarding citizenship vary greatly from one country to the next. Some countries look back one generation, others look back two or three. Some countries look at a parent's citizenship at the time of the child's birth, others only look at the parent's citizenship at the time of the parent's birth. So - you will need to do some research into Polish citizenship law to find out if there is any possibility of you qualifying for Polish citizenship.

Returning to the subject of your grandparents' home town/village in Poland... it's occurred to me that a genealogy forum might be a good place to obtain more information. There are hundreds of forums and mailing lists at www.rootsweb.com, including a whole sub-section dealing specifically with territories either side of the present German-Polish border

http://boards.rootsweb.com/localitie...istreg/mb.ashx

(Rootsweb isn't the only place that has genealogy forums... but it's the one I'm familiar with)

Absolutely. It's even led me to realise that if I wanted it I could go for German citizenship - my mother was born in Germany to German parents, but migrated to Australia at the age of 7 and became an Australian citizen while still a child.

Audrey

Unless there are some mitigating laws (I think there is one), that seems to leave you SOL.

1) citizenship passed on via the father only until 19980 or so (unless your mother was not married to your father when you were born)

2) mother forfeited Australian citizenship when she (or her parents) took out Australian citizenship. However, since she was a minor at the time, I understand she can reclaim it.

Not too sure - you were born to an Australian mother. If your mother had still been German at the time of your birth you would be Australian (because born in Australia) and might be - depending on the date of your birth - German (because born to a German mother).

Mothers can pass on german citizenship since 1976 (not 1998 as mentioned before) and it also is valid going back in time, so if you were born before 1976 and apply, you will get citizenship.

Here's a situation that came up yesterday. Friend's wife's maternal grandfather was a German (merchant) sailor who jumped ship in Peru during WW-I and never went back to Germany. Presumably married and then fathered many children in Peru. Friend's mother even has school certificates issued by the Third Reich (apparently common of many of German descent who went to school in 1933-45).

I assume that the friend's wife's mother can apply for German citizenship but has to prove that her father was only a German citizen at the time of her birth and he was married to her mother. How would she get her mother to prove that he was not a Peruvian citizen at the time of her mother's birth (don't think he ever became a Peruvian)?

Also, would the mother lose her eligibility for German citizenship if she emigrated from Peru (citizen by birth) and naturalised in the U.S.?

Is the friend's wife eligible to obtain German citizenship by descent from a German mother if she was born in the early '60s?

Fortunately her family has made contact with the extended family in the old East Germany and I believe one of the distant cousins is or was the local buergermeister so they should be able to get German documentation. They also have lots of family in Peru (mother emigrated to the U.S. where friend's wife was born).

It'd seem my friend's wife is SoL getting citizenship through her German-by-descent mother as she had to claim citizenship during a 3 year period in the mid '70s.

This seems to be a good and official guideline:

http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/u...tizenship.html

This is not the case. I have not read all pages of this thread, but dual/triple citizenship BY BIRTHRIGHT, rather than by NATURALISATION, is accepted and permitted.

So, for example, if a German father and a Canadian (for the sake of example) mother had children, that child would automatically have both German and Canadian citizenship. If the mother had, say Canadian and Martian citizenship, the child would have German, Canadian, and Martian citizenship.

What is generally not permitted - though there are exceptions to this as well - is for a German citizen to voluntarily (ie through naturalisation) acquire a second citizenship. So if a German citizen applies for, say, Australian citizenship (assuming he is entitled to this) he loses his German citizenship unless he has received special permission granting him the right to maintain his German citizenship. It is important to realise that merely the act of applying for a second citizenship, and not its granting, forfeits his right to German citizenship.

The obvious (recent) change to this is EU citizenships. Germany will allow its citizens to voluntarily acquire another EU citizenship. So, for example, a German living in the UK, who potentially has a right to UK citizenship could successfully have both.

Germany operates on the basis of jus sanguinis, or citizenship by blood, unlike most other countries which operate on the basis of jus soli, or citizenship based on the law of the soil.

As far as I know, most other countires operate on the basis of jus sanguinis, only around 20% of the world's countries use jus soli

It's actually more complicated than that. Some countries (like the UK) have fairly complex citizenship laws which are neither one nor the other.

I don't think this is true anymore; at least for certain countries. My father (German) emigrated to the US many years ago but never obtained US citizenship for this very reason. However, several years ago the rules were changed and he applied for and obtained US citizenship and did not have to give up his German citizenship. He did not need any special permissions.

As far as I am aware the rules have only changed with regards to other EU citizenships.

Of course your father may simply have "forgotten" to tell the German embassy about his US citizenship when it came to renewing his German passport....

Finding a German Lawyer for Citizenship Help
 

Flying Lawyer,
Do you specialize in German Citizenship law or know someone who does? I of course have googled some, but its always nice to get a reference.
Thanks!