Your letter should be addressed to the German registry office of the place (village/ municipality/ city) where you were born or which registered your birth abroad. You can find contact details for the relevant registry office by searching online for the keywords: Standesamt + place where you were born OR your last German residence OR Standesamt I (if you were born abroad and your birth was registered in Germany, but you have never lived in Germany).

Please bear in mind that the office’s official language is German and that therefore communication will also be conducted in German. Unfortunately, the Embassy does not offer translation services and cannot help with translating or writing emails in German. If you need help with the German correspondence, you might want to consider seeking help from a translator (e.g. Chartered Institute of Linguists), family members or friends.

If you contact the competent registry office by email or via the contact form, please do not forget to give your name and postal address. Under German data protection regulations, you might not be issued with a certificate immediately but might be asked to prove your identity/your relationship to the person concerned first. The registry office will let you know if this is the case. We recommend that you state your relationship to the person concerned or your reason for needing the certificate when you make your initial enquiry.

Fees are set by the registry office itself and payments generally have to be made to a German account. Further information can be found on the website of the relevant registry office.

We recommend you order the international version of the birth certificate. This version is already translated into several languages, including English, and will likely save you the expense of a translation.

German birth certificates for persons born in the United Kingdom

If the birth is not yet registered in Germany, information on birth registration applications can be found here.

Obtaining birth certificates from former Eastern German territories

To obtain a German birth certificate from the former Eastern territories of the German Reich and Prussia, please contact the “Standesamt I” in Berlin. Their address is:

Standesamt 1
Schönstedtstraße 5
13357 Berlin (Mitte)
Germany
Email: urkundenstelle@labo.berlin.de

If the relevant register entry is available at the Standesamt I, a birth certificate will be issued, for a fee. Otherwise (e.g. if registers were destroyed during the war), you will receive written confirmation that the registry office is not in a position to issue a birth certificate in your case. When enquiring, please include a postal address, as birth certificates cannot be sent by email.

More information can be found on the website of the Standesamt I (in German only).