Your report (Germany will make it easier for diaspora to regain citizenship, 30 August) and my subsequent correspondence with the Austrian embassy in London illustrate the inequality of national laws which vary – by 500-plus years – on the period within which dual nationality may be claimed with another EU country. Ireland and Italy admit applications from grandchildren of their nationals. In the specific case of antisemitic persecution, Spain and Portugal now accept applications from Sephardic descendants of the mass expulsions of 1492.
My mother, an Austrian Jew, fled to Britain in 1936, marrying and settling here in 1938. She had two daughters with my (British) father. According to current Austrian law, applications for dual citizenship are only admissible from “those born before 1st September 1983: where the father is an Austrian citizen at time of child’s birth”.
Alternatively, “[it] is open only to victims of Nazi persecutions and not to their descendants”. It seems particularly crass that members of a matrilineal people should be excluded through an adherence to their eligibility to apply exclusively the grounds of their paternal descent.
Given that direct “victims of Nazi persecutions” are, by definition, almost all dead by now, and given that their children are most likely to have been born, as I was, before 1983, this ruling seems designed to be as restrictive as possible. For this to alter there would need to be a change in the law.
Perhaps those of us now questioning if we properly belong here should at least seek to retrieve the right of return to our parents’ – and grandparents’ – homeland.
I would welcome contact from others who may feel as I do, or have advice and expertise to offer. If there is momentum to campaign here for such a change, I would be happy to work with others to launch it. I can be contacted at amandahopkinson@hotmail.com
Amanda Hopkinson
Norwich
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