Germany Passport Application/Renewal (Reisepass)

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, 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 candidate in the Passport vertical — every other tracked jurisdiction (US, GB, IE, CA, NZ, AU, SG) already has a published passport schema. Germany's own two published schemas (de/bmi/residence-registration, de/bmi/residence-deregistration) are the only DE schemas in the registry to date; this document is DE's first in the Passport vertical and its third overall.

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): de/bmi/passport-application / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Primary source URL: https://service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/121151/ — Berlin's official "Reisepass beantragen" service page. Fetched directly and read in full (not a small-model summary standing in for the primary text) via the WebFetch tool, which returns a converted-to-markdown reading of the live page; the retrieval succeeded (no block encountered, unlike the WAF/HTTP blocks recorded for canada.ca and nzta.govt.nz in ca/cra/individual-income-tax-and-benefit-return-t1 and nz/nzta/drivers-licence-renewal). Covers eligibility requirements (citizenship, personal appearance, Berlin residency and the primary/secondary fee distinction, minors), the required-documents list, the complete fee schedule (age tiers, secondary-residence surcharge, express, 48-page, in-office photo, postal delivery), processing times, the in-person-only submission channel, the provisional-passport alternative, and the legal basis (PassG §6 Abs. 1, PassV, PassVwV).
• Secondary source (national cross-check): https://www.amtlich-einfach.de/DE/Fuer_Privatpersonen/Ausweise_und_Fahrzeuge/Reisepass/reisepass_node.html — a federal citizen-service digitalisation ("Amtlich einfach") showcase page, not Berlin-specific. Independently corroborates: the 6-8 week standard processing time (Berlin: "up to 8 weeks"); the 3-4 business day express time (Berlin: "maximum 4 business days"); the May 2025 rule that citizen offices no longer accept printed biometric photos, only digital submission via an office service station or a certified studio with an access code (matches Berlin's digital-photo requirement and the two photoCreationChannel options modelled here); that first-time applicants need a birth certificate and that the office also needs "a parent with ID to confirm identity" for a minor (used to source the guardianIdentityDocument entry, which Berlin's own page does not spell out as a separate item from general minors eligibility); and that parental consent "can be provided in writing" (used to source guardianConsentDocument).
• Source found unreachable: the catalog candidate's original candidateSource, https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/leichte-sprache/reisepass-und-personalausweis, returned HTTP 404 as of 2026-07-02. It was not used; the Berlin service page and the amtlich-einfach.de page above were used instead. A future review should check whether the bundesregierung.de "Leichte Sprache" page has moved to a new URL rather than being retired outright.
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-02
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer)

What was confirmed directly against the primary source

From service.berlin.de/dienstleistung/121151/ (fetched and read in full):

| Source element | Field(s) / schema element | |---|---| | "German citizenship required" | isGermanCitizen (fieldRole: eligibility, exit transition) | | "Berlin residency required (primary residence); secondary residence acceptable with valid reason (higher fee applies)" | residenceBasis | | "Current biometric passport photo (digital format, as of May 1, 2025)" | photoCreationChannel | | "Previous documents (if available)" / "your previous document (Reisepass) will be invalidated at the time of application" | identityDocumentForVerification | | "Birth certificate or marriage certificate (if never held such documents or personal data differs from registration)" | neverHeldGermanIdOrPassport, personalDataDiffersFromRegistration, birthOrMarriageCertificate | | "Naturalization certificate and previous passport/identity document (for recently naturalized citizens)" | recentlyNaturalised, naturalisationCertificate, previousForeignIdDocument | | "For minors: legal guardians must apply; both child and guardian(s) must attend" | applicantIsMinor | | "Standard passports contain 32 pages; an extended version with 48 pages is available for frequent travelers" | passportPageCount | | "Standard: up to 8 weeks" / "Express: maximum 4 business days (application submitted before 11:00 AM)" | processingSpeed | | Fee table (age tiers, secondary-residence surcharge, express +€32, 48-page +€22, in-office photo +€6, postal delivery +€15) | not modelled as data (see "Fees, deliberately unencoded" below); drives which enum options exist on residenceBasis, passportPageCount, processingSpeed, photoCreationChannel, deliveryMethod | | "In-person only at citizen offices (Bürgerämter)" | process.type, description | | Provisional passport (1-year validity, no biometric chip) available if standard/express can't meet a deadline | out of scope (description); a related but distinct service, same discipline as excluding de/bmi/residence-deregistration's sibling scope from de/bmi/residence-registration | | Legal basis: PassG §6 Abs. 1, PassV, PassVwV | cited in authority/description |

What was cross-checked against the secondary source

The May 2025 digital-photo rule, the standard/express processing-time figures, the first-time-applicant birth-certificate requirement, and the guardian's-ID-and-consent minors requirement were all independently corroborated by amtlich-einfach.de, a federal (non-Berlin-specific) page — giving reasonable confidence this models the nationally-set Passgesetz data model rather than a Berlin-only variant, the same convention already established for de/bmi/residence-registration's Berlin/Munich exemplar cross-check.

What is NOT yet independently verified

• The live in-person appointment system's actual screen/data-entry sequence. Like ca/on/mto/drivers-licence-renewal and sg/acra/sole-proprietorship-registration, the authoritative "form" here is not a downloadable document but a clerk's internal system, not independently reachable. This document's fields and step ordering are reconstructed from the 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 121151 is treated as a representative exemplar of a nationally-set legal framework (PassG/PassV), not proof every Land is byte-identical — the same caveat already recorded for de/bmi/residence-registration.
• Exact wording of the guardian consent requirement. amtlich-einfach.de states consent "can be provided in writing" but does not quote a verbatim consent statement, so guardianConsentDocument is modelled as a supporting-evidence document (a document to be provided), not as an attestation (which per SPEC §9 requires an exact, source-verbatim statement string this research did not find).
• 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

• Renewal and first-time application share one document. The source frames "your previous document will be invalidated" as the common case but explicitly supports first-time applicants via neverHeldGermanIdOrPassport — this mirrors the catalog candidate's own title ("Passport Application/Renewal").
• Out of scope: the provisional passport (vorläufiger Reisepass), the service for German citizens not registered in Berlin/tourists/Germans resident abroad (dienstleistung 306704), the Kinderreisepass, and the Personalausweis (a separate DE catalog candidate). Each is a related but distinct service.
• Single applicant only, consistent with every other schema in this registry; a minor's guardian is modelled only via the responsible-party documents, not as a full co-applicant field set.

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 ca/on/mto/drivers-licence-renewal and sg/acra/sole-proprietorship-registration. Re-attempt the bundesregierung.de "Leichte Sprache" source at its current URL, if found, as an additional independent federal-level cross-check.

Re-verification

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