Anyone who cheats on the language test for naturalization or even buys a false certificate from fraudsters risks having their citizenship subsequently revoked. This is considered “fraudulent misrepresentation”, as the press office of the Tübingen district administration informed tünews INTERNATIONAL on request. “The naturalization authority can revoke the granting of German citizenship under the conditions of Section 35 of the Citizenship Act,” says the spokesperson. The regulation that German citizenship can be revoked if it was obtained through fraudulent misrepresentation, threats or bribery is not new, by the way. It already existed in a similar form before the new citizenship law came into force in June 2024.
The background to this is a trial at Stuttgart District Court. There, two brothers were recently sentenced to more than four years in prison each for selling more than 350 language certificates and certificates from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees to people seeking naturalization. The men lived in Aspach (Rems-Murr district) and made contact with their customers via Tiktok. They earned more than 300,000 euros.
Learning enough German to pass the test for the required language level B1 is hard work. Some people may even think about taking a shortcut. But this is not a trivial offense and a bad grade like at school is not enough. If such a case becomes public, the district administration office, as the responsible naturalization authority, looks into the exact circumstances. “In the case of a revocation, the individual case and its specific circumstances must always be considered,” says the district office. It is therefore a discretionary decision. “However, the reasons for revocation in such a case are likely to be so serious that it is difficult to imagine renouncing the revocation of German citizenship,” the Tübingen press office continues.
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Landratsamt in Tübingen. Foto: tünews INTERNATIONAL / Mostafa Elyasian.
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