Registry entry

Germany National Identity Card Application/Renewal (Personalausweis)

Apply for a first German national identity card or renew/replace an existing one (the Personalausweis) in person at a local citizen office (Bürgeramt), under the Personalausweisgesetz (PAuswG). German nationals aged 16 or older who do not hold a valid passport are legally required to hold this card; there is no online submission channel — the applicant (and, for a minor, their legal guardian) must attend in person, presenting an identity document that is checked against the population register (Melderegister) already holding the applicant's core personal data from residence registration (see de/bmi/residence-registration). This document models the citizenship eligibility gate, Berlin residency basis, the applicant's prior-document/naturalisation status (which determines what supporting evidence is required), the minor/guardian path including the separated-guardian consent nuance, the first-application religious-headwear declaration, and the service options every applicant chooses (photo channel, delivery method). It does not model: the separate provisional identity card (vorläufiger Personalausweis) service, used only when an applicant urgently needs a document before the standard card can be produced; the separate service for German citizens not registered in Berlin, the homeless, tourists, or Germans resident abroad; the exemption-from-the-obligation-to-hold-an-ID-card service; the Reisepass (passport) or Kinderreisepass processes; the online authentication (eID) PIN-activation step, which happens after the card is issued and is out of scope for an application schema; or fee amounts, which change over time and are deliberately not encoded here as authoritative data, consistent with every other schema in this registry. It does not submit the application; the live sources are always authoritative (see VERIFICATION.md).

Registry entry

de/bmi/national-identity-card-application

Jurisdiction
Germany · national
Version
1.0.0
Verification
draft
Authority
Bürgeramt (local citizen office), under the Personalausweisgesetz (PAuswG); card production by the Bundesdruckerei

GovSchema spec v0.3

Authoritative source Personalausweis beantragen (no form number — in-person application recorded directly into the Bürgeramt's system, not a downloadable form)

Machine access

Schema document
registry/de/bmi/national-identity-card-application/1.0.0/schema.jsonapplication/schema+json
Verification record
registry/de/bmi/national-identity-card-application/1.0.0/VERIFICATION.mdtext/markdown
Registry catalog
registry/index.jsonone record per schema id

Field reference

13 fields across 5 steps, read from the published schema.json — names, types, requiredness, and validation as the document states them. The live government form remains the authoritative source.

Citizenship eligibility

  • isGermanCitizen boolean required

    The Personalausweis may only be issued to a German national (PAuswG §1 Abs. 1). A non-national resident uses a residence permit/visa document instead, not modelled in this registry. If false, the flow ends and this service does not apply.

Applicant details

  • lastName string required

    As held in the Melderegister (population register) and confirmed against the identity document presented at the appointment, not freely declared by the applicant — see VERIFICATION.md.

    length: 1–100classification: pii
  • firstNames string required

    As held in the Melderegister and confirmed against the identity document presented at the appointment — see VERIFICATION.md.

    length: 1–100classification: pii
  • dateOfBirth date required

    YYYY-MM-DD. Determines the card's validity period (6 years if the applicant is under 24 at issuance, 10 years if 24 or older) and whether the applicant is old enough to be subject to the Ausweispflicht (mandatory possession from age 16) — both derived outcomes, not separately collected fields.

    classification: sensitive-pii
  • residenceBasis enum required

    primary_residence = the applicant's sole or main dwelling (Hauptwohnung) is registered in Berlin, the standard case. secondary_residence_with_reason = the applicant applies at a secondary-residence (Nebenwohnung) Bürgeramt with an important reason (wichtiger Grund); this is accepted but incurs a higher fee because the main-residence municipality must consent. An applicant not registered in Berlin at all (including the homeless, tourists, and Germans resident abroad) uses a distinct, out-of-scope service (see description).

    enum: primary_residence | secondary_residence_with_reason

Prior documents and status

  • neverHeldGermanIdOrPassport boolean required

    True for a genuine first-time applicant (e.g. a child's first document, or an adult who has never held German identity documents). If true, a birth, marriage, or civil-partnership certificate is required in addition to the standard identity check, and the religious-headwear declaration (if applicable) must be made now (see the birthOrMarriageCertificate and religiousHeadwearDeclaration entries in documents).

  • personalDataDiffersFromRegistration boolean required

    True after a name change (e.g. marriage) not yet reflected in the Melderegister. If true, a birth, marriage, or civil-partnership certificate is required in addition to the standard identity check (see the birthOrMarriageCertificate entry in documents).

  • recentlyNaturalised boolean required

    If true, the naturalisation certificate and the applicant's previous (foreign) passport or ID card, or an identity certificate from the Landesamt für Einwanderung (LEA), must also be presented (see the naturalisationCertificate and previousForeignIdDocument entries in documents).

  • belongsToHeadwearRequiringReligiousCommunity boolean optional

    If true, this must be credibly declared at the time of a first-ever application so the biometric photo may show religious headwear per PAuswG photo standards (see the religiousHeadwearDeclaration entry in documents). Only asked of first-time applicants; a renewal does not re-ask this.

Minor and guardian

  • applicantIsMinor boolean required

    If true, a legal guardian's involvement is required. For an applicant under 16, the legal guardian(s) must submit the application themselves (the child must also attend). At any age under 18, if the applicant's legal guardians share custody but live apart, the guardian who is not present must give written consent unless the applying guardian has sole custody or both guardians attend together (see the guardianConsentAndIdDocument entry in documents, gated on separatedGuardianConsentRequired).

  • separatedGuardianConsentRequired boolean optional

    True triggers the requirement for the absent guardian's written consent declaration plus their identity document (for signature comparison). Not required if the attending guardian has sole custody, or if both guardians attend the appointment together. If the guardians share custody and do not live together (not just temporarily apart), only the guardian with whom the minor's main or sole residence is registered may submit the application at all.

Service options

  • photoCreationChannel enum required

    in_office = created at the Bürgeramt's own digital service station, at an additional fee. pre_taken_certified_studio = created in advance at a certified photo studio and transmitted electronically to the office. Since 1 May 2025, printed photos are no longer accepted; the photo must be submitted digitally through one of these two channels.

    enum: in_office | pre_taken_certified_studio
  • deliveryMethod enum required

    pickup_at_citizen_office = collect the finished card, plus the Sperrkennwort (blocking password) for the eID online-authentication function, at the Bürgeramt once the Bundesdruckerei has produced it (no extra fee). direct_postal_delivery = have it delivered by Deutsche Post directly and only to the applicant in person at their main residence (pilot phase), at an additional fee; the applicant's previous ID card is invalidated at application time, so a valid passport must be shown to accept delivery.

    enum: pickup_at_citizen_office | direct_postal_delivery

Verification record

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice. It documents the provenance of the published fields, documents, and flow, records a mock-data test run of the field set, and states the current verification claim honestly.

Current claim

  • status: draft
  • verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
  • verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-02

The document was derived from and cross-checked against the official/showcase sources below, but the full field-by-field comparison the practice requires (manual-source-review-v1 → Procedure step 2) has not yet been completed against the live, authenticated in-person appointment system a Bürgeramt clerk actually uses (no such system is reachable pre-appointment). It therefore remains draft, not verified.

Why this candidate, why now

This is the last open catalog tier-1 candidate in the National ID & Civic Documents vertical (discovery/catalog.json), identified during the GOV-200 catalog gap review: German nationals aged 16+ are legally required to hold an identity document, most commonly this card, making it one of the highest-frequency processes in the jurisdiction. It is distinct from de/bmi/residence-registration (Anmeldung, open to any resident) and de/finanzamt/tax-identification-number (neither of which is an identity- document application), and from de/bmi/passport-application (a related but separate BMI document this cycle deliberately mirrors in structure, since both share the same in-person Bürgeramt/Melderegister process model).

Sources examined

  • Document (id, version): de/bmi/national-identity-card-application / 1.0.0
  • Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
  • Primary source URL: https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/120703/ — Berlin's official "Personalausweis beantragen" service page. Fetched directly with curl (HTTP 200) and read in full as raw HTML text, not a small-model summary. Covers eligibility (citizenship, personal appearance, Berlin residency and the primary/secondary fee distinction, minors), reasons to apply, validity periods, the full required-documents list (including the minor/guardian custody nuance and the first-application religious-headwear declaration), the complete fee schedule, processing time, the in-person-only submission channel, the direct-mail delivery pilot, and the legal basis (PAuswG §9).
  • Secondary source #1 (national cross-check, Application): https://www.personalausweisportal.de/Webs/PA/EN/citizens/german-id-card/application/application-node.html — the BMI's own citizen-facing English-language "German ID Card" portal. The live site returns HTTP 400 to a direct fetch (a bot-block distinct from, but structurally similar to, the WAF blocks recorded for canada.ca and nzta.govt.nz); retrieved instead via a Wayback Machine capture dated 2024-12-14. Independently corroborates: application is in-person only, at "the identity card authority of your local government services office"; the card is issued only to German nationals; minors under 16 need a parent/guardian applicant, generally with the other parent/guardian's consent; necessary documents (valid ID or, failing that, passport/child ID/ child passport, plus a current passport photograph, plus birth certificate in the same two conditions Berlin describes); detailed photograph requirements (front view, centred face, open eyes, closed mouth, neutral expression); and — a fact Berlin's page does not mention — that a second fingerprint has been mandatory on newly issued cards since August 2021 (EU-wide requirement), which this schema does not model as a field because fingerprint capture happens at the appointment itself, not as an applicant- supplied data point, consistent with how photo capture is modelled (photoCreationChannel) but fingerprinting is not.
  • Secondary source #2 (national cross-check, Fees and Validity): https://www.personalausweisportal.de/Webs/PA/EN/citizens/german-id-card/fees-and-validity/fees-and-validity-node.html — Wayback capture dated 2024-09-26. Confirms the 6-year (under 24) / 10-year (24+) validity split and the same fee-driver categories Berlin lists (age tier, secondary-residence surcharge, temporary card, eID activation/PIN-change/address-change being free since January 2021). Fee amounts differ from Berlin's live page — this capture shows €37/€22.80 (age tiers) versus Berlin's live €46.00/€27.60 — read as a genuine fee increase in the ~20 months between the two sources, not a factual discrepancy in this schema (fees are not encoded as schema data either way; see "Fees, deliberately unencoded" below).
  • Secondary source #3 (field-layout cross-check, Data on the ID Card): https://www.personalausweisportal.de/Webs/PA/EN/citizens/german-id-card/data-on-the-id-card/data-on-the-id-card-node.html — Wayback capture dated 2024-12-19. The front/back field legend itself is an interactive numbered image whose labels did not extract as text; used only to confirm the page's existence and general front/back split, not as a field source.
  • Tertiary source (issued-card field layout, not application-form fields): the English Wikipedia article "German identity card" (retrieved 2026-07-02) documents the exact printed field list on the physical card (front: photo, document number, RFID access number, surname, birth name, given names, date of birth, nationality, place of birth, expiry date, signature; back: eye colour, height, date of issue, issuing authority, residence, religious name/pseudonym, MRZ) and the chip contents (name, date of birth, photograph, and — since 2021 — fingerprints). This confirms that nearly all core identity data displayed on the finished card originates from the Melderegister, not fresh applicant declarations — the same "confirmed against the population register, not freely declared" framing already used for de/bmi/passport-application's lastName/ firstNames/dateOfBirth fields — and that the card does not print a sex/gender marker (unlike this registry's other National ID schemas, e.g. sg/ica/identity-card-replacement), so no such field is modelled here.
  • Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-02
  • Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer)

What was confirmed directly against the primary source

From service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/120703/ (fetched and read in full):

| Source element | Field(s) / schema element | |---|---| | "Deutsche Staatsangehörigkeit" | isGermanCitizen (fieldRole: eligibility, exit transition) | | "Wohnsitz in Berlin (Ausnahmen möglich)" / secondary-residence fee surcharge | residenceBasis | | "1 aktuelles, digitales biometrisches Passfoto (Neue Regelung ab 01.05.2025)" | photoCreationChannel | | "Ihr altes Dokument (falls vorhanden)" / "Ihr gültiges Dokument (falls vorhanden)" | identityDocumentForVerification (modelled as genuinely optional, not required — see "Scope notes") | | "ggf. Personenstandsurkunde... falls Sie noch nie ein Dokument... hatten" / "falls Ihre Angaben... abweichen" | neverHeldGermanIdOrPassport, personalDataDiffersFromRegistration, birthOrMarriageCertificate | | "Wenn Sie eingebürgert wurden und erstmals deutsche Dokumente beantragen wollen" | recentlyNaturalised, naturalisationCertificate, previousForeignIdDocument | | "Persönliche Vorsprache... Bei Minderjährigen vor Vollendung des 16. Lebensjahres..." / separated-guardian custody rule | applicantIsMinor, separatedGuardianConsentRequired, guardianConsentAndIdDocument | | "Gehören Sie... einer Religionsgemeinschaft an, die... nicht ohne Kopfbedeckung..." | belongsToHeadwearRequiringReligiousCommunity, religiousHeadwearDeclaration | | "Bei Antragsstellung kann ein Direktversand gewählt werden (Pilotphase)" | deliveryMethod | | Fee table (age tiers, secondary-residence +€13, on-site photo +€6, direct-mail +€15) | not modelled as data (see "Fees, deliberately unencoded" below); drives which enum options exist on residenceBasis, photoCreationChannel, deliveryMethod | | "Das können Sie ausschließlich vor Ort im Bürgeramt machen" | process.type, description (in-person only, no online channel) | | "Personalausweis vorläufig beantragen" (separate service) | out of scope (description), same discipline as de/bmi/passport-application excluding the provisional Reisepass | | Legal basis: Personalausweisgesetz (PAuswG) §9 | cited in authority/description |

What was cross-checked against the secondary/tertiary sources

The in-person-only channel, German-nationals-only eligibility, the two-tier validity period, the general minor/guardian-consent shape, and the photo requirements were all independently corroborated by the BMI's own personalausweisportal.de pages (application, fees-and-validity) — the same "Berlin exemplar of a nationally-set legal framework, cross-checked against a federal source" convention already established for de/bmi/residence-registration and de/bmi/passport-application. The Wikipedia article independently corroborated the printed-card field layout and confirmed the absence of a sex/gender field.

What is NOT yet independently verified

  • The live in-person appointment system's actual screen/data-entry sequence. As with de/bmi/passport-application, the authoritative "form" here is not a downloadable document but a Bürgeramt clerk's internal system, not independently reachable pre-appointment. This document's fields and step ordering are reconstructed from citizen-facing guidance prose, not a direct read of that system.
  • Whether every Land's citizen office uses an identical fee/service-option structure. Berlin's dienstleistung 120703 is treated as a representative exemplar of a nationally-set legal framework (PAuswG), not proof every Land is byte-identical — the same caveat already recorded for de/bmi/residence-registration and de/bmi/passport-application.
  • Exact wording of the separated-guardian consent declaration. Berlin's page names the downloadable form ("Einverständniserklärung des nicht anwesenden Elternteils zum Antrag auf Ausstellung eines Personalausweises") but this session did not retrieve and read that PDF directly, so guardianConsentAndIdDocument is modelled as a supporting-evidence document (a document to be provided), not as an attestation with a source-verbatim statement string.
  • The exact fee amounts currently in force nationwide. The €13/€23.20 gap between Berlin's live page and the BMI portal's 2024 Wayback capture (see Sources) is read as a genuine increase over time, but this was not cross-checked against a third, more recent national source.
  • Fees, deliberately unencoded. As with every other schema in this registry, specific EUR amounts (recorded above only for traceability) are not asserted as schema data; they change over time and the live source is authoritative.

Scope notes

  • identityDocumentForVerification is modelled as genuinely optional (required: false, no requiredWhen), unlike de/bmi/passport-application's equivalent field, which is required: true. Berlin's own wording — "falls vorhanden" ("if available") — for both the old-document and valid-document bullets makes clear a true first-time applicant (most commonly a 16-year-old with no prior Personalausweis or Reisepass) may have nothing to present at all beyond the birth certificate already required by birthOrMarriageCertificate. This is a deliberate refinement over the passport schema's modelling choice, not an inconsistency — flagged here so a future reviewer does not "fix" it to match.
  • The minor/guardian custody nuance is new relative to de/bmi/passport-application. Berlin's Personalausweis page spells out a materially richer rule than its Reisepass page: separated joint-custody guardians require the absent guardian's written consent unless the applying guardian has sole custody or both attend together, and if the guardians live apart (not just temporarily) only the guardian with whom the minor is registered may apply at all. The last of these (the registered-guardian-only restriction) is documented in this file and the field description, but is not separately modelled as its own field/ condition — the schema captures the consent-document consequence (separatedGuardianConsentRequired) an agent needs to act on, not every underlying eligibility nuance a human clerk would apply, matching the economy-of-modelling precedent set by au/ato/individual-tax-return-mytax.
  • The first-application religious-headwear declaration is new and not present in any other DE schema in this registry. It is gated to first-time applicants only (neverHeldGermanIdOrPassport: true), matching Berlin's own "bei der erstmaligen Beantragung" (at first-time application) wording.
  • Out of scope: the provisional identity card (vorläufiger Personalausweis, dienstleistung 120682), the service for German citizens not registered in Berlin/the homeless/tourists/Germans resident abroad (dienstleistung 326550), the exemption-from-the-Ausweispflicht service, the Reisepass (a separate, already-published DE schema) and Kinderreisepass, and the post-issuance eID/PIN-activation step. Each is a related but distinct service or a later lifecycle stage, not part of applying for the card itself.
  • Single applicant only, consistent with every other schema in this registry; a minor's guardian is modelled only via the responsible-party document, not as a full co-applicant field set.

Mock-data test run

A fabricated first-time-minor-applicant scenario (Lukas Weber, age 17, born 2008-11-15, first-ever Personalausweis, separated joint-custody parents with one present) was assembled into a conformance packet (conformance/de/bmi/national-identity-card-application/1.0.0/) and checked programmatically against this schema's own required/requiredWhen rules: all 13 fields and all 6 documents accounted for exactly once (collected or explicitly not-applicable; provided or explicitly not-applicable), 0 errors. This scenario was deliberately chosen over a simpler adult-renewal case to exercise every conditional path this document adds beyond de/bmi/passport-application's template: the minor/separated-guardian consent chain and the first-application religious-headwear declaration.

Path to a verified claim (next step)

To advance to status: verified, a reviewer applies manual-source-review-v1 (Procedure step 2) field-by-field against the live Bürgeramt appointment process itself, not just the surrounding guidance prose — the same gap flagged for de/bmi/passport-application. Retrieve and read the actual "Einverständniserklärung des nicht anwesenden Elternteils" PDF form directly to confirm (or promote to an attestation) the consent-document wording, and cross-check current fee amounts against a third, more recent national source.

Re-verification

Per the practice's Cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-01 (6 months). Re-check all sources on or before that date and on any source.url change.

View the raw record (VERIFICATION.md)

Version history

  • 1.0.0 draft latest this page has verification record schema.json

Independent and non-affiliated

GovSchema is an independent, open-source project. This reference is not produced, reviewed, or endorsed by Bürgeramt (local citizen office), under the Personalausweisgesetz (PAuswG); card production by the Bundesdruckerei or any government. The authoritative source is always the live government form and its official instructions.