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Germany has joined the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in the year 1966. Therefore no diplomatic authentication or legalization of documents from Germany is required for the legal communication with another member state of the convention. The documents only need to be stamped with an "apostille" by the issuing state's authorities in order to be valid in the state of destination.
Germany has bilateral agreements with Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy and Austria. In these countries official documents from Germany do not require legalization.
For the use in several countries, the apostille is not sufficient, since they never joined the Hague Convention. With some member states of the Hague Convention there are special arrangements, due to Germany's objection against their admission (Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Uzbekistan, e.g.). In both cases, the legalization of the documents is usually necessary. Schmidt & Schmidt offers this service aswell.
Responsible for issuing the apostille are the following institutions:
- Federal Office of Administration - federal documents
- President of the German Patent Office - documents issued by the Federal Patent Court or the German Patent Office
- For regional documents, the federal states of Germany have varying responsibilities
An apostille is a stamp of rectangular shape. The heading "Apostille (Convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961)" must be in French.
The following documents can be authenticated by apostille:
- Certificates of civil status (certificates of birth, death, marriage and divorce)
- Education documents (school reports, certificates, diplomas)
- Trade register excerpts
- Judicial decisions
- Notarially certified copies of documents
- Notarially certified translations
- Further notarial documents (authorizations, last will, declarations)
- Commercial documents legalized by a state organ of registration (articles of incorporation, registration certificates, tax registrations etc.)
Requirements for the documents:
An apostille can be issued exclusively on an original document. Therefor, the latter must be in an apparent good condition, all stamps and signatures have to be clear and readable. Furthermore, it must not contain alien marking and labels.
Some authorities require that a document must be issued no earlier than 6 months.
Additional services
In addition to the legalization of your documents, we can provide you with high quality translations.
If you want to bring company information before the court, it needs to be legalised as well. We are therefore offering extracts from the commercial register of Germany including apostille and translation.
German Apostille Service - Original Documents Express
Express Service 7-10 Business Days