The Genuine and the Fake? German Identity and German Citizenship at a New Juncture.

Germany's citizenship law of 1913, which granted citizenship solely on the principal of descent (ius sanguinis), stood virtually unaltered until January 2000 when a new law was put in place. Along with the principal of ius sanguinis, the new law includes a modified version of the principal of territory (ius soli) and grants German citizenship to children born in Germany to immigrants satisfying particular criteria. This paper argues that in Germany, at least at the political level, notions of nation, ethnicity, race, citizenship and state are so tightly intertwined that the changes in the law may be only appeasing European Union legislators and saving German face while making no substantial difference to the German nation-state as it has been constructed since 1871. In fact, language used in the drawing up of the new law and a new census classification scheme implemented since the enactment of the law reveal that even some persons who believed themselves to be German (through ius sanguinis) fall outside the realm of those who 'belong' to the nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]