How is the declaration filed?
Sec. 58c is not a naturalisation. There is no residence requirement, no language test and no citizenship to give up — because it is a declaration (Anzeige), not an application (Antrag) to be granted something.
The distinction matters more than it sounds. Ordinary naturalisation is a grant of citizenship subject to a range of statutory requirements, including residence, language skills, financial self-sufficiency and good conduct, and in some cases the authority retains an element of discretion even where those requirements are met. Sec. 58c works differently. Citizenship is acquired by notification if the statutory conditions are established. The authority does not decide whether the applicant is sufficiently deserving or sufficiently integrated. Its task is essentially to determine whether the requirements laid down by law are met. If they are, citizenship follows as a matter of law.
The procedure, step by step
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We establish which of the six cases applies
Everything downstream depends on this, which is why it is the first thing we do. The six cases ask for different things — Case 3 needs no proof of residence at all, Case 4 does; Case 5 stops at 9 May 1945, Case 6 does not stop anywhere — so the case decides the document list, and gathering the wrong records first is the most common way to lose months.
More than one case can be open at the same time, and that is worth having. A file fails on documents far more often than it fails on law, so a second route is a second chance — and where two are open we build the file on both.
You are welcome to read ahead: compare the six cases side by side, or answer the questionnaire, which works through the statutory elements one at a time and gives us the starting point for this step.
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You gather the documents that prove the direct line
This is the half of the file that is about you, and it is the one place we ask you to do something: send us what you already hold. What is needed is an unbroken chain — your birth certificate, then the birth certificate of your parent, then of his/her parent, up to the persecuted ancestor — plus the marriage certificate for every name change along the way, so that the woman on one certificate and the woman on the next are visibly the same person.
Where a birth was out of wedlock, an acknowledgement of paternity or a judicial declaration of paternity does the work the birth certificate does not. Where there was an adoption, the adoption order — and note that Austria set the age of majority at 21 until 1973 and at 19 until 2001, so whether an adoption counts turns on the year it happened.
Documents about your own marital status are part of this, as is a current criminal record certificate from your country of residence — the one document only you can request. It has a shelf life: it must not be older than eight months when the declaration is filed, so we tell you when to apply for it rather than asking for it at the outset.
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You gather the documents about your ancestor
This is the half that goes to archives, and it is where the time goes. Three questions have to be answered: which citizenship your ancestor held before March 1938, where he/she had his/her main home, and what happened to him/her. You put those questions to the registries, the community records and the memorial archives that can answer them.
Which of the three the file actually has to answer depends on the case. Cases 3 and 5 carry no residence requirement, so the registration record is not needed — but they rest entirely on proving Austrian citizenship, which is the harder document. Cases 4 and 6 ask for the residence instead. The Foreign Ministry's own guidance notes that where an ancestor was deported abroad or died as a result of persecution, the documentary burden is lighter than in the other cases.
The full list, organised by what each document proves — it is there so you can see what the file has to contain before you start assembling it.
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We arrange translation
Documents are accepted in German or in English. Anything in another language has to be translated into German by a sworn and judicially certified translator — not by a fluent relative, and not by a translation service without that standing. A Hebrew, Spanish or Portuguese certificate is the usual reason this step exists, and we commission the translator.
Foreign original documents may also need authenticating before an Austrian authority will accept them. Where the issuing country is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, that is an apostille, obtained from the designated authority in the country that issued the document. Where it is not, the older route of consular legalisation applies. We will tell you for which documents you should obtain an apostille (and how you can get it easily).
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We complete the declaration form
The declaration is made on a form, and we complete it.
Minor children are not carried along automatically. A separate declaration is needed for each child born before citizenship is awarded; children born afterwards are Austrian citizens by descent without anything being filed. We prepare those declarations alongside yours — children can be entered on the same declaration form, so the details and documents are not submitted twice.
A spouse is not included at all. Unless your spouse is himself/herself a descendant of a persecuted ancestor within the meaning of the Austrian Citizenship Act, a declaration under sec. 58c is not open to him/her.
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We file the declaration with the competent provincial authority
We file the declaration with the competent provincial authority. Citizenship in Austria is administered by the provinces rather than federally, and for anyone who was neither born in Austria nor lives there, the competent province is Vienna — Municipal Department 35, where we deal with the case handlers directly and follow the file through.
On cost: filing a declaration under sec. 58c(1a) has been exempted from all federal fees by law, and Vienna, as the province competent for applicants abroad, charges nothing either. What the exemption does not cover is the outlay around the file — the archives, the certified copies, the translations, the apostilles, and our own legal fees.
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The authority decides
Sec. 58c sets no deadline of its own. What applies is the general rule of Austrian administrative procedure: the authority decides without unnecessary delay, and at the latest six months after the declaration is received. The Foreign Ministry declines to be more precise than that, and it is right not to be — the real duration turns on how much research the authority has to do on top of what was filed. It is worth putting the six months next to the realistic total, because they only start once the declaration is in: assembling the file that makes it worth filing is the part that takes months before the clock begins. This is the step where there is nothing to do but wait, and we do the waiting — if the authority comes back with a query, it comes back to us.
What arrives is a written confirmation. Because sec. 58c operates by declaration, the confirmation records a fact rather than granting a favour.
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You receive the citizenship certificate and passport
A certificate of Austrian citizenship (Staatsbürgerschaftsnachweis) is the written proof of the citizenship, and it is what an Austrian passport is then applied for on the strength of, at the Austrian embassy or consulate general nearest you. We see the certificate through and prepare the passport application; the passport itself has to be collected in person, which is the one appointment you cannot delegate.
Your existing citizenship is untouched. Sec. 58c does not require anyone to give up the nationality he/she already holds — which is the opposite of the general rule in Austrian citizenship law, and is the point of the provision.
If the answer is no
A negative decision on a declaration is an administrative decision like any other, and Austrian administrative procedure provides a route of appeal from it to the administrative court of the competent province. Whether an appeal is worth bringing depends entirely on why the declaration was refused — a refusal for a missing document is a different problem from a refusal on the reading of a statutory limb, and only the first is usually solved by finding the document. We advise on which of the two it is, and we conduct the appeal where one is worth bringing.
A refusal is also not always the end of the same facts. Where the file rested on one case and failed on a limb of it, another of the six may still be open on the same history — which is the practical reason for establishing at the outset whether more than one case applies.
How long it takes
There is no honest general answer to how long your file will take, because the answer is set by the archives that hold your family's records and not by the Austrian authority. A family whose ancestor appears in the Vienna registration records and on a transport list may have a complete file in weeks. A family whose records were destroyed may spend a year establishing the same facts by other means.