Schmidt & Schmidt is offers the legalization of public documents from Germany by apostille.

Germany acceeded to the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in 1966. Therefore, there is no diplomatic authentication or consular legalization of public documents from Germany required for the successful legal communication with other member states of the Convention. The documents only need to be attested by an apostille certificate with an "apostille" stamp on it by the issuing state's authorities in order to be valid in the state of destination.

Due to Germany's bilateral agreements with Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, and Austria, public documents from Germany do not require legalization of any kind for their use in these countries.

Due to Germany's objection against the accession of some countries (Ex. Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Uzbekistan) to the Hague Convention, special arrangements apply, with the consular legalization of the public documents often being necessary. Schmidt & Schmidt provides this service as well.

Responsible for issuing the apostille are the following authorities:

• 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

The apostille is a stamp of rectangular shape. It should be filled in in the official language of the issuing authority. The heading "Apostille (Convention de la Haye du 5 octobre 1961)" written in French is a necessary requirement for the apostille's validity.

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
• Court decisions
• Notarially certified copies of documents
• Notarially certified translations
• Further notarial documents (authorizations, last will, declarations)
• Commercial documents legalized by a state registration body (articles of incorporation, registration certificates, tax registrations etc.)

Requirements for the documents:

The apostille can be exclusively issued for the original document. Therefore, the latter must be presented in good condition, with all stamps and signatures clear and readable. Furthermore, it should not contain alien markings or labels.

Some authorities require that a document must be issued no earlier than 6 months.

Additional services

In addition to the legalization of your public documents, we can provide you with high-quality translations.

Should you require company information for use in court, it needs to be legalized as well. We are therefore offering extracts from the commercial register of Germany including apostillization and translation.

On average, processing the documents takes 14 days.

Courier services are charged and invoiced separately according to the courier service’s rates.

You can pay for our services by PayPal, bank transfer or credit card.