Registry entry

Germany GmbH/UG (haftungsbeschränkt) Formation via Musterprotokoll (Single Founder)

Form a German limited-liability company — a Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH) or its low-capital variant, the Unternehmergesellschaft (haftungsbeschränkt) (UG) — using the simplified, single-founder Musterprotokoll (model protocol) that Anlage 1 to § 2 Abs. 1a GmbHG annexes directly to the statute. The Musterprotokoll may be used only when the company has at most three shareholders and one managing director; this document scopes further, to the single-founder/single-managing-director case (often the same natural person), the GmbH/UG counterpart to gb/companies-house/company-incorporation-in01, ie/cro/company-incorporation, and us/ca/sos/business-entity-llc-formation. Under German law the Gesellschaftsvertrag (articles of association) must be notarized (§ 2 GmbHG); when the Musterprotokoll is used it simultaneously serves as the articles of association, the shareholder list (Gesellschafterliste), and the power of attorney to file for registration. A notary executes the deed and electronically transmits it, together with the § 8 GmbHG application particulars, to the Handelsregister (commercial register) maintained by the competent Amtsgericht (Registergericht); the company acquires legal personality only on entry in the register (§ 11 GmbHG). Out of scope: the multi-founder (up to three shareholders) Musterprotokoll variant, the video-communication notarization variant (Anlage 2, § 2 Abs. 3 GmbHG), any bespoke (non-template) Gesellschaftsvertrag, in-kind (Sach-)contributions, and the separate post-formation Gewerbeanmeldung (trade registration, already covered by de/gewerbeamt/business-registration) and Finanzamt tax registration (Fragebogen zur steuerlichen Erfassung). It does not submit anything or imply government endorsement.

Registry entry

de/handelsregister/gmbh-formation-musterprotokoll

Jurisdiction
Germany · national
Version
1.0.0
Verification
draft
Authority
Notaries executing the statutory Musterprotokoll under § 2 Abs. 1a GmbHG, whose deed is then entered in the Handelsregister (commercial register) maintained by the competent Amtsgericht (Registergericht), per the Gesetz betreffend die Gesellschaften mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbHG)

Authoritative source GmbHG Anlage 1 (zu § 2 Abs. 1a) a) Musterprotokoll für die Gründung einer Einpersonengesellschaft; §§ 2, 5, 5a, 7, 8, 11 GmbHG

Machine access

Schema document
registry/de/handelsregister/gmbh-formation-musterprotokoll/1.0.0/schema.jsonapplication/schema+json
Verification record
registry/de/handelsregister/gmbh-formation-musterprotokoll/1.0.0/VERIFICATION.mdtext/markdown
Registry catalog
registry/index.jsonone record per schema id

Field reference

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

Company type, name, and seat

  • companyType enum required

    gmbh = standard Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (§ 5 GmbHG minimum capital rules apply); ug_haftungsbeschraenkt = Unternehmergesellschaft (haftungsbeschränkt), the low-capital variant under § 5a GmbHG. Both use the same Musterprotokoll template; the differences are the share-capital floor and payment rule (see shareCapitalAmountEur/capitalPaymentMode) and the mandatory legal-form suffix in companyName.

    enum: gmbh | ug_haftungsbeschraenkt
  • companyName string required

    Must include the mandatory legal-form suffix: 'GmbH' or 'Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung' when companyType is gmbh; 'UG (haftungsbeschränkt)' or 'Unternehmergesellschaft (haftungsbeschränkt)' when companyType is ug_haftungsbeschraenkt (§ 5a Abs. 1 GmbHG naming requirement). Corresponds to the template's blank 'unter der Firma _____'.

    length: 1–200
  • registeredSeat string required

    The German municipality (city/town) that is the company's registered seat, determining the competent Registergericht. Corresponds to the template's blank 'mit dem Sitz in _____'.

    length: 1–100
  • businessPurpose string required

    Free-text description of the company's business activity/object.

    length: 1–500

Share capital and formation costs

  • shareCapitalAmountEur number required

    Whole-euro amount (§ 5 Abs. 2 GmbHG). When companyType is gmbh, must be at least 25000 (§ 5 Abs. 1 GmbHG minimum). When companyType is ug_haftungsbeschraenkt, must be at least 1 and less than 25000 (§ 5a Abs. 1 GmbHG); above 25000 the company is a standard GmbH, not a UG. Corresponds to the template's blank '_____ € (i. W. _____ Euro)'.

    range: 1–∞
  • capitalPaymentMode enum required

    full_immediate = the full share capital is paid in cash before the registration application. fifty_percent_now_remainder_on_demand = at least one quarter of each share's nominal value is paid, and in aggregate at least half of the § 5 Abs. 1 minimum (EUR 12,500) is paid, with the remainder called up later by shareholder resolution (§ 7 Abs. 2 GmbHG) — available for companyType gmbh only. When companyType is ug_haftungsbeschraenkt, in-kind contributions are excluded and the capital must be paid in full before registration (§ 5a Abs. 2 GmbHG), so this must be full_immediate; the template's own footnote 3 requires striking the second alternative for a Unternehmergesellschaft.

    enum: full_immediate | fifty_percent_now_remainder_on_demand
  • incorporationCostsCapEur number required

    Fixed by the template itself: the company bears formation costs up to EUR 300, but no more than the amount of its own share capital (relevant chiefly to a UG with capital below 300); costs above that cap are borne by the founder personally.

    range: 300–300

Founding shareholder

  • founderFullName string required

    The sole founding shareholder, who subscribes the entire share capital (Geschäftsanteil Nr. 1). This document scopes to a single founder; the statute separately permits up to three shareholders under a different Musterprotokoll variant, out of scope here.

    length: 1–200classification: pii
  • founderDateOfBirth date required

    Every notarial deed must identify its parties precisely enough to exclude doubt (§ 10 BeurkG); standard notarial practice for a Musterprotokoll records each party's date of birth alongside their name, even though the compact template prints only a name blank.

    classification: pii
  • founderResidentialAddress string required

    Recorded for the same notarial-identification reason as founderDateOfBirth.

    length: 1–300classification: pii
  • founderMaritalStatus enum required

    The template's footnote 2 requires the notary to note the founder's Güterstand (marital property regime) and, where relevant, the consenting spouse's/civil partner's signature. Gates spousalConsentObtained.

    enum: unmarried | married_or_civil_partnership_community_of_accrued_gains | married_or_civil_partnership_other_property_regime | divorced | widowedclassification: sensitive-pii
  • spousalConsentObtained boolean optional

    Only legally necessary when the founder is married or in a civil partnership under the default community-of-accrued-gains regime (Zugewinngemeinschaft) AND contributing the share capital would dispose of substantially all of their assets (§ 1365 BGB); the notary makes this determination case by case at the appointment, so this field is modeled as an optional attestation rather than an enforced requirement pending live-notary confirmation for a given case.

Managing director appointment and affirmations

  • directorFullName string required

    This document scopes to a single managing director — the maximum the Musterprotokoll permits — often (but not necessarily) the same natural person as founderFullName; modeled independently since the underlying template does.

    length: 1–200classification: pii
  • directorDateOfBirth date required

    Printed directly on the template.

    classification: pii
  • directorResidentialAddress string required

    Printed directly on the template.

    length: 1–300classification: pii
  • representationAuthority enum required

    The Handelsregister application must separately state the type and scope of the managing directors' power of representation. Because this document scopes to exactly one managing director (the Musterprotokoll's own limit), that director always holds sole (rather than joint) representative authority — the only value this document supports.

    enum: sole_representation
  • section181BgbExemptionGranted boolean required

    Without this exemption a sole managing director cannot validly sign contracts on the company's behalf with themself (e.g. as its sole shareholder) or as representative of a third party at the same time — a routine constraint for a single-founder/single-director GmbH/UG, and a standard election recorded on the Handelsregister application alongside representationAuthority.

  • directorEligibilityAffirmationConfirmed boolean required

    The managing director must affirm to the register that none of the disqualifying grounds in § 6 Abs. 2 GmbHG apply to them (e.g. certain insolvency-related or financial-crime convictions, or a court/administrative order barring them from managing a business), and that they have been instructed of their unlimited duty to disclose information to the court.

  • capitalContributionAffirmationConfirmed boolean required

    The managing director must affirm that the payments required under § 7 Abs. 2/3 GmbHG (see capitalPaymentMode) have been made and that the contributed funds are finally at the managing director's free disposal.

Notarization and register filing

  • domesticBusinessAddressStreet string required

    A German business address the company can be reached at, distinct from registeredSeat (which is only a municipality name); mandatory on the Handelsregister application.

    length: 1–160
  • domesticBusinessAddressPostalCode string required

    German 5-digit postal code.

    pattern
  • domesticBusinessAddressCity string required

    Must be a real, deliverable German location; normally the same city as registeredSeat, but stated separately per § 8 Abs. 4 GmbHG.

    length: 1–100
  • notaryName string required

    The notary before whom the founder appears to execute the Musterprotokoll.

    length: 1–200
  • notaryOfficialSeat string required

    The municipality where the notary is officially seated.

    length: 1–100
  • registerCourtName string required

    The Amtsgericht (local court) responsible for the Handelsregister covering registeredSeat, e.g. 'Amtsgericht Charlottenburg (Berlin)'. The company acquires legal personality only once entered in this court's register.

    length: 1–160
  • declarationDate date required

    The date the founder appears before the notary and the deed is executed.

    classification: pii

Verification record

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice.

Current claim

  • status: draft
  • verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
  • verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-04

The document was derived from and cross-checked against the primary legal sources below. The full field-by-field comparison the practice requires has been completed once against those sources (this record), but not yet by a second, independent reviewer — so status remains draft, not verified.

Why this schema and why now (GOV-1136)

GOV-1136 asked for a fresh catalog-and-gap-research cycle. Step 1 (catalog audit) found 137 published schemas across 11 core jurisdictions (AU, CA, DE, FR, GB, IE, IN, NL, NZ, SG, US). Every specific gap the issue's own notes named — DE Tax ID (Steuer-Identifikationsnummer), SG NRIC loss/damage + re-registration, NZ RealMe, "remaining voter registration" — was already published in prior cycles (de/finanzamt/tax-identification-number, sg/ica/identity-card-replacement, sg/ica/identity-card-reregistration, nz/dia/realme-verified-identity, and a full voter-registration set spanning AU/CA/FR/GB/IE/IN/NL/NZ/US). Those notes were stale; see the comment on GOV-1136 for the full audit.

Step 2 (fresh gap research) instead found a real, unaddressed gap in the Business Formation vertical named directly in the issue ("LLC, EIN, and Incorporation"): de/gewerbeamt/business-registration, fr/inpi/micro-entrepreneur-activity-declaration, nl/kvk/sole-proprietorship-registration-eenmanszaak, and sg/acra/sole-proprietorship-registration each cover only a sole trader/micro-entrepreneur registration — the simplest business form, with no separate legal personality. None of DE, FR, NL, or SG had a schema for forming a genuine limited-liability company (the direct analogue of gb/companies-house/company-incorporation-in01, ie/cro/company-incorporation, ca/on/registration/business-incorporation, nz/companiesoffice/company-incorporation, in/mca/company-incorporation-spice-plus, us/ca/sos/business-entity-llc-formation, and au/asic/proprietary-company-registration).

Germany's GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) was chosen first among the four because Anlage 1 to § 2 Abs. 1a GmbHG annexes a fixed-text model form (Musterprotokoll) directly to the statute itself for the simplified single-founder case — an unusually tractable source: the form text is part of the primary legal source, not a policy description or a secondary summary.

Sources examined

  • Document (id, version): de/handelsregister/gmbh-formation-musterprotokoll / 1.0.0
  • Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
  • Authority: Notaries executing the Musterprotokoll under § 2 Abs. 1a GmbHG; the resulting deed is filed for entry in the Handelsregister (commercial register) maintained by the competent Amtsgericht (Registergericht). There is no single national "Companies House"-equivalent body in Germany — registration is decentralized across the Länder's register courts, joined by the shared handelsregister.de portal — the same decentralized-authority pattern already used by de/gewerbeamt/business-registration (Gewerbeamt/Ordnungsamt) in this registry.
  • Primary legal sources (each section fetched and quoted verbatim from gesetze-im-internet.de, the Bundesministerium der Justiz's official law portal):
  • Primary form source: the Bundesministerium's own start-up portal, existenzgruendungsportal.de, publishes a direct PDF reproduction of Anlage 1(a) GmbHG's Musterprotokoll text (05-uebersicht_Einpersonengesellschaft.pdf, dated December 2025). Downloaded directly (curl) and extracted in full with pdfjs-dist (2 pages: page 1 the template's 7 numbered clauses and all printed blanks; page 2 the notes/footnotes and the source citation to Anlage 1/2 GmbHG). Cross-checked against dejure.org's consolidated Anlage_1.html rendering of the same statutory annex — both agree on every blank and footnote.
  • Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-04 (all sources fetched and read live at authoring time; no bot-block encountered on any of the above domains).
  • Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer, initial authoring source-review).

What was confirmed against the source

| Source element | Field(s) | |---|---| | § 5a GmbHG — capital below § 5 Abs. 1 minimum defines a UG | companyType | | Musterprotokoll §1 — "unter der Firma _____ mit dem Sitz in _____"; § 5a Abs. 1 naming suffix requirement | companyName, registeredSeat | | Musterprotokoll §2 — "Gegenstand des Unternehmens ist _____" | businessPurpose | | Musterprotokoll §3; § 5 Abs. 1, § 5a Abs. 1 GmbHG | shareCapitalAmountEur | | Musterprotokoll §3 + footnote 3; § 7 Abs. 2, § 5a Abs. 2 GmbHG | capitalPaymentMode | | Musterprotokoll §5 — fixed EUR 300 formation-cost cap | incorporationCostsCapEur | | Musterprotokoll preamble/§3 — founder name blank | founderFullName | | § 10 BeurkG — notarial identification standard | founderDateOfBirth, founderResidentialAddress, directorResidentialAddress | | Musterprotokoll footnote 2 — Güterstand/spousal-consent notation | founderMaritalStatus, spousalConsentObtained, spousalConsentDocument | | Musterprotokoll §4 — "Herr/Frau _____ geboren am _____ wohnhaft in _____" | directorFullName, directorDateOfBirth | | § 8 Abs. 4 GmbHG — scope of representative authority | representationAuthority | | § 181 BGB self-dealing restriction (standard Handelsregisteranmeldung practice) | section181BgbExemptionGranted | | § 8 Abs. 3 GmbHG — managing directors' affirmation re: § 6 Abs. 2 disqualifying grounds | directorEligibilityAffirmationConfirmed | | § 8 Abs. 2 GmbHG — affirmation that contributions are made and at free disposal | capitalContributionAffirmationConfirmed | | § 8 Abs. 4 GmbHG — "eine inländische Geschäftsanschrift" | domesticBusinessAddressStreet/PostalCode/City | | Musterprotokoll preamble — "erschien vor mir _____", "Notar/-in mit dem Amtssitz in _____" | notaryName, notaryOfficialSeat | | § 11 GmbHG; Musterprotokoll §6 — copy to the Registergericht | registerCourtName | | Musterprotokoll preamble — "Heute, den _____" | declarationDate | | § 10 BeurkG identification duty | founderIdentityDocument, directorIdentityDocument | | Musterprotokoll §6 — deed distribution | notarizedMusterprotokoll |

Conformance test run

Two scenarios exercise both companyType branches:

  • conformance/de/handelsregister/gmbh-formation-musterprotokoll/1.0.0/application-packet-gmbh.json — an unmarried founder forming a standard GmbH with the full EUR 25,000 minimum capital, paid in full immediately.
  • .../application-packet-ug.json — a married founder (community-of-accrued- gains regime) forming a UG (haftungsbeschränkt) with EUR 1,000 capital (below the GmbH floor, as § 5a permits), paid in full as § 5a Abs. 2 mandates, with spousalConsentObtained = true and the corresponding spousalConsentDocument provided.

A scripted evaluator (reimplementing the GSP-0013 requiredWhen grammar — conditionLeaf operators plus all/any/not composition — against fields[] static required, fieldRole: "eligibility"/eligibleValues, and documents[].requiredWhen) checked both packets: 0 violations across 26 fields + 4 documents each. A mutation test confirmed the conditional document requirement actually fires, not just that the happy path passes: removing spousalConsentDocument from the UG packet while spousalConsentObtained stays true correctly produced VIOLATION: document 'spousalConsentDocument' is required but not provided.

Full console output is saved as application-packet-gmbh.txt and application-packet-ug.txt alongside the packets.

What was NOT modeled, and why

  • Multi-founder Musterprotokoll (up to three shareholders). Anlage 1 GmbHG's compact template has a distinct multi-person variant; this document scopes to the single-founder case only, matching the single-director scope other jurisdictions' company-formation schemas in this registry already use.
  • Video-communication notarization (Anlage 2, § 2 Abs. 3 GmbHG). A 2022 reform lets the Musterprotokoll be executed via video call instead of an in-person notary appointment; the underlying data fields are materially the same, but the process/consent flow differs enough to warrant its own schema rather than an implicit variant of this one.
  • Bespoke (non-template) Gesellschaftsvertrag. Used for >3 shareholders, multiple managing directors, or non-standard terms; out of scope by design, same boundary ie/cro/company-incorporation draws around its bespoke constitution.
  • In-kind (Sach-)contributions. § 7 Abs. 3/§ 5a Abs. 2 GmbHG both treat these specially (and the UG variant excludes them outright); modeling them would require the separate Sachgründungsbericht, out of scope here.
  • § 1365 BGB's "substantially all assets" threshold for spousalConsentObtained. The statute itself does not give a bright-line test; secondary practitioner guidance describes it as notary-determined case by case. Modeled as an optional field the agent surfaces to the founder rather than an enforced rule this document cannot itself evaluate — the same honesty-over-false- precision approach used for ie/cro/company-incorporation's PPSN field and flagged in the notequals-empty-string-absent-field-bug lesson from a prior cycle.
  • Post-formation Gewerbeanmeldung and Finanzamt tax registration. Already covered by de/gewerbeamt/business-registration (trade office) and out of scope for the separate Fragebogen zur steuerlichen Erfassung (tax office); this document stops at Handelsregister entry, the point at which the GmbH/UG itself comes into legal existence (§ 11 GmbHG).

Next review

nextReviewBy: 2027-01-04, or sooner if the GmbHG's Musterprotokoll annex, the § 5/§ 5a capital figures, or the § 8 registration particulars 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 Notaries executing the statutory Musterprotokoll under § 2 Abs. 1a GmbHG, whose deed is then entered in the Handelsregister (commercial register) maintained by the competent Amtsgericht (Registergericht), per the Gesetz betreffend die Gesellschaften mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbHG) or any government. The authoritative source is always the live government form and its official instructions.