Hi,

I currently hold Daueraufenthalt-EG and I am living in Germany for the past 6.5 years. I plan to undertake up to 16 month study in France or the UK. When I start with my study I would have lived for 7 years in Germany.

1. Would I lose the possibility for German citizenship in this case?
2. Are there any other ways that I can avoid losing the German citizenship possibility?
possibly maintaining residence or getting special permission etc.

looking forward for your comments. thanks in advance.

Hi,

In order not to give the German authorities any excuses not to grant you citizenship :

1. you need to be resident IN Germany for 8 years.
2. it can be 7 years if you successfully take part and pass the integration course.
3. You need to be employed in DE at the time of application and during the entire citizenship decision period which can take anything from 2 months to 10 months.

The above can vary slightly from state to state.

If you leave DE now for UK or FR, you will have to de-register yourself from Germany. I would not risk that if you want to be 100%.

Having said that couple of interesting points :

I was in a similar situation and was out of the country due to work in the last year but I managed to keep my residence in Germany i.e was still angemeldet and had my employer who had a branch in Germany to pay my salary in Germany. Since the move was to another Schengen country (UK is not) there was no way for them to track that I was physically out of the country for more than a year.

My sister got a special permission to leave a couple of years ago when she had niederlassungserlaubnis and has now applied for her citizenship couple of months ago. She does not have a decision yet so I can't say for sure if the fact that she went out of the country to study would create any trouble or not.

In any case, best policy (provided your Auslaenderamt beamter is not a pain in ass like most are) is to go to the Auslaenderamt and ask this question directly.

..good luck.

thank you buntyji.

I have the same concern.

One interesting point for me is the special permission that your sister got. (I go with the assumption that Niederlassungserlaubnis and Daueraufenthalt-EG is of the same standing).

Could you please elborate on how long she was away from Germany and from which Auslanderamt she got this permission?

looking forward for more experience and suggestions from others.

thanks again!

anyone has some more inputs or experiences, please share.

thanks!