Genealogy Chat

I am sure someone can help me with this: I was lead to believe that my partners mother was born in Germany to german parents. However, since BMD has arrived on Ancestry I have found that she was in fact born in England to german parents. Does this make her English or German? On a lighter note my brother was born in Malta to English parents - one day he came home from school with some pals and said to mum 'go on, tell them I'm a Maltesa' Sandra

I think it will depend on which nationality she decided to keep. Or maybe she has dual nationality? Kate.

Ah - Got me there, unfortunately she died some years ago. Sandra

Sandra You don't automatically get the nationality of your parents or of where you were born. My sons were born in France and my daughter in the middle east, in both cases I had to register them with the embassy. My husband is French and for my daughter we only registered her at the French embassy - it was too expensive to do both, so she might not even be able to get a British passport. What passport did she carry? if any? Sarah

Sarah thanks for that - As far as I am aware she never had a passport, all holidays were taken in GB. Sandra

Just a thought but if she is registered on the BMD I would have thought she would have been English. If her parents did register her wih the German authorities, I know from experience that by German law you are only allowed to have one nationality, although Britian allows people to have dual nationality. Elizabeth

Our grandaughter was born in Germany whilst SIL was there in the Army. They were told she would have dual nationalty which they could alter by registering her as British at the British Embassy and at the same time they renounced her German birth nationalty. She was born in the eighties and has a British passport ,but she still gets asked if she,s german when she applies for anything because she states on forms that she was born in Germany. Shirley

Thanks for your input Elizabeth Anne & Shirley. I feel that from your views I have to lean towards her being English then. The family never returned to Germany so wouldn't have any interest in registering her there. Whoa - my partners going to interested to hear that he's not half german anymore!! Sandra

My son was born in Germany whilst my husband served over there. We got him registered at the British Embassy pretty damn quick, otherwise if he'd received German nationality (or dual) he would have been called up for National Service by the Germans - don't think he would have appreciated that!! Kim

Hello Sandra, I have the same problem. My grandfather was born in England to Polish immigrants. Everyone in his family, save him, were Polish and so I therefore consider him Polish. I was always told that to be half of something you need to be 'mixed'. So I consider my dad half Polish and I consider myself 1/4 Polish. I'd say my grandad was of full Polish blood, but because of where he was born, he'd be a citizen of Britain. Hope that helped. Kirsten