Apply for naturalisation as a foreigner without naturalisation entitlement

• You have been legally resident in Germany for at least eight years without interruption.
  Your stay must be permanent. The period is reduced to seven years if you have successfully completed an integration course. You must prove this with a certificate from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.
  The period can be shortened to six years in the case of special integration achievements.
• Your identity and nationality have been clarified.
• You and your family members run a household independently in Germany. Your living conditions are centred in Germany.
• If you are 16 years or older at the time of naturalisation: You are committed to the free democratic basic order of the Basic Law. This also includes a declaration against anti-constitutional or extremist endeavours.
• You finance the living expenses for yourself and your dependants without being entitled to public funds (e.g. social welfare, basic income support for jobseekers). The receipt of child benefit or a pension from a German institution does not prevent naturalisation. If you receive other benefits to which you are currently entitled for less than a year, e.g. unemployment benefit I, parental allowance, maintenance payments, sickness benefit, housing benefit, education grant, a decision on your future prospects is required. This decision relates to whether you will be able to secure your livelihood in the future without receiving such benefits.
• You give up your previous nationality. If you are a national of another member state of the European Union or Switzerland, you can retain this nationality. The Nationality Act permits multiple nationality in exceptional cases if certain conditions are met.
• You have sufficient knowledge of the German language. You fulfil the requirements of the language test for the German B1 certificate of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages or have acquired sufficient knowledge of German by attending school or obtaining a school-leaving certificate.
• They have knowledge of the legal and social order and living conditions in Germany. You can prove this either by successfully completing a naturalisation test or by submitting a certificate from a German general school (at least Hauptschule). The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees provides further information on the naturalisation test. Addresses and dates of adult education centres in Baden-Württemberg where you can take the naturalisation test can be found on the websites of the adult education centres.
• You have assimilated into the German way of life, i.e. you accept the basic principles of the social and legal order that applies in Germany.
• You are exempt from prosecution.
  Not taken into consideration: Educational measures or disciplinary measures under the Juvenile Courts Act, fines of up to 90 daily rates, prison sentences of up to three months that have been suspended and remitted after the probation period has expired.
  Convictions for unlawful anti-Semitic, racist, xenophobic or other inhuman offences are never disregarded.

Naturalisation is excluded if there arethere are factual indications that you pursue or support anti-constitutional or extremist endeavours or have done so in the past and cannot credibly demonstrate that you have refrained from pursuing or supporting such endeavours in the past.