I'm not really sure how to write this blogpost. It's been a week now since the full body blow that I received last Friday at the German consulate in Houston, and I still don't know how to wrap my head around it all. What started out as what I thought was a routine trip to renew my German passport turned into something still completely surreal, if not downright impossible. But the fact is that I was told that my dual citizenship--never questioned by the various German authorities that renewed my passport and national ID in full knowledge of my American citizenship, which I acquired in April of 1987--never existed and that I have not been a German citizen for the past thirty-three years.
Wow. Live that one down. I'll spare you the details of my visit to the consulate. Suffice it to say that they kept both my passport and ID, and thus my ability to freely live in my homeland (or Europe, for that matter) should I choose to do so. Done, just like that. The paper I had to sign, acknowledging that my passport had been confiscated, allows for the possibility of my taking legal steps, and I am still considering that. But my reading of some of the laws that govern German citizenship as well as conversations with my brother also suggest that this would be a quixotic battle that especially in the age of COVID-19 would be difficult to fight.
For the moment, the main implication is that I cannot enter Europe as we as Americans have been shut off thanks to our inability to contain the virus the way other countries have. In the future--assuming that we will return to a pre-pandemic world--it will mean that I no longer can stay indefinitely in Germany or the EU, should I want to. There are ways to acquire residency; enough ex-pats from various countries do so every year throughout the EU. It's not that I was planning to move back to Germany (although in recent months I have been giving it some occasional thought, with the way our political realities in this country have developed), but at least that option was there. No longer, at least not like under the old constellation.
The most difficult part, I think, is that thirty-three years of my life have been fundamentally changed from a legal standpoint. I am still who I am, but one half of my identity essentially has been wiped away. That's hard to stomach. Since I am basically a very optimistic person, I keep telling myself that worse things can befall me, much worse, but this will take some major adjusting-to in the weeks and months to come.
Jürgen
