It’s taken a while for us to get Sadie’s Gerburtsurkunde (birth certificate), but I think we should finally have the whole situation settled tomorrow. This is very important, because we need this information so that we can register Sadie as an American citizen born abroad, get her a passport and a social security card, and (last but not least) enroll her in our health insurance so we can pay our bills.

The village where we live is reponsible for issuing the certificate, but since the population is only about 2,000 people, there is only one person who works in the office (called the Standesamt) that does these things.

The week after Sadie was born, this person was on vacation, like many, many other people in Germany, including myself, during the time between Christmas and Three Kings Day (January 6th).

Apparently the vacation didn’t go so well, because instead of returning to work on the 7th, he went to the hospital instead.

Late last week, Sandi contacted Karen Dinser, one of the people we know in town, and asked her to help with the situation. Karen called the office and found out the they would have someone to act as a backup on Monday of this week.

So, on Monday, Sandi and Karen went to the office, and delivered all of the necessary information.

Like most government processes in Germany, this one generates a lot of paperwork. It appears that in addition to the birth certificate, the village is also going to issue a Familienbuch, which functionally is the German equivalent of a family Bible where the family’s genealogical information is recorded.

Yesterday, we did at least recieve the version of the birth certificate (one of four versions, we understand) that we need to take to the US consulate in Frankfurt. This one is called an Abstammungsurkunde (“Descent Certificate”), showing that Sandi and I are the parents. This, of course, is very important in order to get the US government to recognize Sadie as a US citizen.

The process is fairly straghtforward, though. We are actually the beneficiaries of a citizenship law passed in 2000, primarily to help people who adopt foreign children and want to bring them to the US. This law also makes it very easy to confirm citizenship for Sadie by confirming that we are her parents.

However, we also recieved some unexpected additional paperwork. Karen was kind enough to explain the forms to us.

First, we received a form to submit our names to the major banks in Germany. Apparently, it is customary for large German banks to give 5 Euros as a present to new babies. By my count, there are 4 major banks located in this area, so Sadie will already have out-earned all of the money her two sisters have made in their entire lives by about $20.

Secondly, we were given forms to enroll our family in the Kindergeld (literally, “Children’s Money”) program. We were already aware of the program, but never considered that we might be eligible for it. Germany subsidizes the income of all resident parents for each child in the family. Apparently, this definition includes us, as HR department at Thomson confirmed for me today. There is both a local and national version of this program, and we are supposed to sign up for both. We are not sure how much money this is exactly yet, though. Someone told us the amount is 50 or 60 euros per child per month. Hmm… 180 euros will pay for a lot of babysitting…

Thirdly, we were given forms to enroll all of our children in the national health insurance (Krankenkasse, which translates roughly as the “cash register for the sick”. I love German words.) This would be nice because we could take our children to the doctor with no out-of-pocket expenses. I checked on this one and we are not eligible, though. What can I say, the guy who gave us the forms is a substitute!

The last bit of information we received was that Sadie was eligible to become a German citizen if we desired. We were totally surprised by this one. One of the interesting features of the United States Constitution is that citizenship is automatically conferred by being born in the USA, regardless of the citizenship of the child’s parents. This was an important value in the early days of the country which increased the number of possible citizens. In many other contries, citizenship is inherited from your parents, regardless of where you are born. Historically, that is how Germany has been.

This information from the Standesamt turned out to be a partial truth– if we had lived in Germany for 8 years at the time of Sadie’s birth, she would be automatically eligible for German citizenship. The law in Germany has been changed in the last few years to accomodate the influx of Turkish immigrants.

I am almost afraid at this point to go pick up the finished birth certificate. Who knows what other surprises they will spring on us!

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