By Meagan Gutenkauf
One of the most frequent questions we get asked is: “Luxembourg?! How are you Luxembourg citizens?!” Believe it or not, we used to ask ourselves that same question.
The Family Legend: “Always Germany”
For generations, my family’s story was simple: we were from Germany. My great-great-grandparents immigrated to America from Germany and Slovakia in the mid-1800s. And my mom’s paternal side had always been from Germany.
Even our surname, Gutenkauf, seemed to confirm it. In German, “guten” means good and “kauf” means purchase. Since my great-grandparents owned a general store, the name fit our history perfectly. We told everyone we were German. No questions asked. It made perfect sense, until one fateful day…
A Life-Changing Suggestion
The shift happened when I started working remotely for a global company. I met a colleague who lived abroad and, upon hearing my last name, insisted (more like demanded 😉) that I look into my ancestry. She believed there was a connection to Germany that could lead to reclaiming citizenship through my ancestors.
I already knew we had a path to Slovakian citizenship through my mom’s maternal side. But that process is very involved, requiring apostilles and translations that take time and a lot of resources. The German idea seemed like a promising alternative.
Digging Into the Roots
I started building a family tree on MyHeritage.com, entering everything I knew about my immediate family. Soon, I had a family tree stretching back over 10 generations.
Once I had most of the family information, I looked at each of my great-grandparents’ place of birth, and did a quick Google search for “citizenship by descent” for every country my great-grandparents were born in.
As expected and not surprising, my 5th-generation maternal grandfather was listed as being born in Germany. But then I saw his parents’ and his spouse’s records: they were all born in Luxembourg.
The Dead End (Or So I Thought)
My first Google search for “Luxembourg citizenship by descent” was discouraging. The main pathway (Article 7) required an all-male line from an ancestor born in Luxembourg between 1815 and 1948. Since it was my grandmother who was born there, it seemed like a dead end.
Solving the Ancestry Mystery
I decided to look even further back. My 6th-generation grandparents were all born in Luxembourg. This raised a huge red flag: How did my 5th-generation grandmother (born in Luxembourg) meet my 5th-generation grandfather born in Germany back in the early 1800s when people rarely traveled? How would my great-great-great grandparents, who were born in two different countries, meet at the young ages of 20 and 27? It was highly unlikely.
So I researched more. Was my great-great-great grandfather really born in Germany? Or could he have been born in Luxembourg, where his parents were born and died? I dug deeper on FamilySearch.org and found the breakthrough: a birth record for my 5th-generation grandfather registered in Luxembourg, not Germany! This satisfied the all-male line from an ancestor born in Luxembourg between 1815-1948.
The Anchor Ancestor
This discovery changed everything. He became our anchor ancestor. Because he was born in Luxembourg, he satisfied the all-male line requirement:
- Anchor Ancestor: Male, born in Luxembourg
- Great-Great Grandfather: Male
- Great-Grandfather: Male
- Grandfather: Male
- My mom: Qualified through this lineage
- Me: Qualified through my mother
- My child: Qualified through me
From “German” to Luxembourgish
In less than a year, our family went from thinking we were German to becoming full citizens of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It was a magical, whirlwind process that officially made me, my child, and my mother all EU citizens.
Coming up next: I’ll dive deeper into exactly why my ancestor was mislabeled as “German” in so many records and the specific steps we took to prove our case to the Luxembourg government! Keep an eye on the blog.