Becoming German

In the end, after all the waiting, the document didn’t look like much — a sheet of A4 paper adorned with a German eagle, and one of those tongue-twisting Germanic compound nouns beneath it: Staatsangehörigkeitsausweis. At last, my Certificate of German Citizenship had arrived. How did I feel? Elated, tearful, overjoyed. It was at this moment that I finally understood how so many Brexiteers must have felt when Britain decided to leave the EU.

When Britain voted Leave I was distraught, but I wasn’t at all surprised. For anyone with eyes and ears, it was clear that a great many Britons were passionate about leaving, and that a lot of Remainers were merely lukewarm. Yet now I’ve become a German citizen, I have a far better sense of the patriotism that drove that vote, and the determination to honour it. For the odd thing is, I’ve always felt patriotic about my German heritage in a way I’ve never felt about my British roots. Now, when my Brexit-eer friends say it’s not just about the money, I know exactly what they mean.

My father was born in Dresden during the second world war, and survived the destruction of that city as a child. His German parents separated during the war, and in 1945 he ended up in Hamburg with his mother, while his father, a German soldier, languished in a British POW camp. In Hamburg my grandma met a British soldier, a journalist called Gerry Cook. When Gerry returned to London she went with him, and took my father with her. My father took Gerry’s surname, forsaking his German surname, von Biel. I never knew my German grandfather (he died when I was a child) and my German grandma never liked to talk about her life before the war. I adored my adopted grandpa, Gerry, and loved listening to his stories of journalistic derring-do.