I have always found it strange that travelling around this small planet can be so easy for some people and so complicated for others, depending largely on the passport they hold. It is simply how the system works, and while I may not agree with all of it, I have learned to accept the practical realities that come with it.
Yesterday, 25 August 2026, Dipty finally picked up her German ID card and passport, after receiving her German citizenship certificate in July 2026. She had applied for German citizenship here in Chemnitz in August 2024, and now, two years later, she is officially a German citizen.
When we moved here in July 2024 due to my job at that time as a researcher in neuromorphic computing at TU Chemnitz, we expected the process, from submitting her application to actually having the German ID card and passport in hand, to be much quicker than it had been for me when I obtained German citizenship while living in Oldenburg. In my case, the entire process, including receiving my ID card and passport, took about 10 months.
The process in Chemnitz started on 21 August 2024, when Dipty contacted the Staatsangehörigkeitsbehörde and explained that she had already been living in Germany for more than 10 years and wanted to apply for German citizenship. The authority sent her a preliminary questionnaire and a list of documents that had to be submitted for an initial review.
On 17 October 2024, the authority confirmed that her application had been received on 21 August 2024 and registered. They asked her to complete the formal application form and the accompanying declarations and return them by post before the application could be processed further. Dipty sent the completed and hand-signed documents by post the following day, 18 October (In fact, I did that, one day before I went to Brussels, Belgium for the first time to start my job as a Scientific Officer for the European Research Council Executive Agency). The authority later confirmed that they had physically received them on 21 October 2024.
At that time, the authority wrote that the entire procedure could currently take approximately one and a half years. They also explained that applications were processed chronologically according to their date of receipt and asked applicants to avoid general status enquiries because these would take away processing capacity.
After that, however, almost a full year passed without any substantive update. On 27 September 2025, Dipty finally contacted them again simply to ask whether the documents she had sent in October 2024 had actually arrived and whether everything had been recorded correctly. On 29 September 2025, they confirmed that the documents had indeed been received on 21 October 2024. By then, however, their estimated processing time had increased from approximately one and a half years to as much as two years.
We were wrong, and we still do not fully understand why her process took so long. What makes the two-year wait even more surprising is that processing times can vary enormously across Germany. In Berlin, for example, some naturalization applications are reportedly completed within just a few months, although the authorities themselves caution that cases can also take a year or longer. So there is clearly no uniform processing time across the country.
Things finally started moving more noticeably in spring 2026. In April, the authority asked Dipty for updated copies of a fairly extensive collection of documents. These included her current residence permit and passport, employment documents, CV, tax certificates for 2024 and 2025, her Master’s degree certificate, proof of registration in Chemnitz, our rental contract and proof of rent payments, recent salary slips, pension information, employment and home-office documentation, and health-insurance documents.
A letter dated 27 April 2026 then invited her to appear personally at the citizenship authority on 4 June 2026 at 08:00. This time she was asked to bring the originals of her residence permit, passport, Master’s degree certificate, B1 German-language certificate, naturalization-test certificate, employment contract and its amendments, her salary statements for March, April and May 2026, and her health-insurance card.
At that appointment, the original documents were checked. She was also asked to sign several documents electronically using one of the authority’s tablet-like signature devices (I remember her being so nervous due to some „hard to understand“ German words, hehe; at home we only speak English). By that point, after such a long period with very little visible progress, it finally felt as though the application was approaching its conclusion.
Shortly afterwards, the final letter arrived. It was dated 1 July 2026 and stated that, after examining her application from 21 August 2024, the authority intended to naturalize her. She was invited to return on 14 July 2026 at 08:20 and was asked to bring proof that the naturalization fee of 255 euros had been paid, together with her passport and residence permit.
At that appointment, she made the formal declaration required as part of the naturalization procedure and was handed her Einbürgerungsurkunde, the German citizenship certificate. She was then informed that she was now a German citizen. After almost two years of waiting, that was the moment when the naturalization itself was finally complete.
She was informed that, under German law, she is now regarded as a dual citizen, Indian and German. However, the situation is different under Indian law, as India does not permit dual citizenship in the conventional sense. Once an Indian citizen voluntarily acquires the citizenship of another country, they can no longer continue to hold Indian citizenship.
The official in Chemnitz also explained that, from the German side, Dipty was regarded as having both German and Indian nationality. Of course, that does not change the separate consequences under Indian law, which is why the next administrative step concerns her status in India.
For this reason, she is planning to apply for an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card at the Indian Embassy in Berlin in the coming weeks. An OCI card does not mean that the Indian government will continue to regard her as an Indian citizen. Legally, an OCI cardholder is a foreign national, not an Indian citizen. However, OCI status provides a number of important privileges, including a lifelong, multiple-entry visa for India and certain rights broadly comparable to those of Non-Resident Indians in specified economic, financial, and educational areas. OCI cardholders do not, for example, have voting rights or the full political rights of Indian citizens.
So, a more accurate way to put it is that the OCI card will allow her to retain a formal and privileged legal connection with India as a person of Indian origin, but it will not make her legally an Indian citizen.
After receiving the citizenship certificate, she was told that she could return without an appointment after roughly three weeks for the German ID card and after roughly five weeks for the German passport. Rather than going there twice, we decided simply to wait until both documents should be ready and collect them together. That is what we did on 25 August 2026.
Travelling around this small planet has just become a lot easier for her as well, and I am very happy about that, especially knowing how much of a struggle it used to be. As seen here, with a German passport (Rank: 4th), she can now travel to around 186 destinations without needing to obtain a visa in advance, compared with only around 55 destinations with an Indian passport (Rank: 82nd). That is a huge change in mobility and should make travelling considerably easier for her from now on.
One of the main reasons we did not leave Chemnitz earlier was that our rental contract required us to continue paying rent for at least two years, until July 2026. By the time that period came to an end, we already knew that a decision on her German citizenship was close, so it made sense to be a little more patient and wait for the process to be completed.
Now that she has her German ID card and passport in hand, there is only one final step left. Once she receives her OCI card (possibly even before that) we will be ready to move on from Chemnitz to a more vibrant city.
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