I recently got married and this was, of course, by no means as straightforward as you think it ought to be. (My fiancé, BTW, is both the original inspiration and subsequent motivation for this blog. So, kudos or blame to her depending on which side you’re on. And for those thinking of gifts, we’ve registered a table here at our local Kaufhof in Not-Bielefeld.)
In most places except perhaps for Utah, a reasonable requirement for getting married is not being married. A more difficult requirement is proving that, especially when, like me, you’ve already been married. It actually shouldn’t be that tricky here in Germany. Unlike many (most? all?) Anglo-Saxon countries, Germany and many other European nations require you to register locally with the authorities. In so doing, they have all your important data: name, address, date of birth, marital status, number of children, name of your first dog, … In theory, it should be possible just to go to them with my passport (or personal ID) to prove who I am and they can “instantly” (that’s bureaucratically “instantly” as in Biblical “days”) see that I’m not married.
In theory …
Because I’m divorced and despite being listed in their electronic books as being divorced, I need to provide them with the divorce certificate to prove that I really am divorced and so able to re-marry. Doesn’t matter that the divorce happened a few admin doors down here in Not-Bielefeld. I need the divorce certificate. Even worse, I also need to provide the marriage certificate to which the divorce certificate applies to. Absolutely no idea why. You’d think that the divorce certificate, being the later and therefore the more relevant of the two documents, would suffice to show that I’m not married. But, apparently I have to prove that I was married to prove that I am divorced to prove that I’m not married to prove that I am able to marry again. And they say marriage can be rough sometimes …
Comes the problem: I didn’t have a copy of the marriage certificate and didn’t really want to ask my ex-wife for one. Comes another problem: my marriage was in faraway Not-Not-Bielefeld. (And that is not a double negative to indicate that the marriage was indeed in Bielefeld. Because Bielefeld doesn’t exist, my marriage wouldn’t either. Which, now in hindsight, would have reduced the paperwork tremendously …) Now, if the marriage officials here in Not-Bielefeld can’t ask their colleagues in the neighbouring divorce department for information, they sure aren’t going to be able to do it with their colleagues in Not-Not-Bielefeld.
Amazingly enough, however, and as the exception that proves the rule (and was nearly the ruin of this blog), I could actually order the marriage certificate from Not-Not-Bielefeld online just by entering the appropriate, detailed information about myself and the wedding that any competent identity thief would have at hand.
After pinching myself nearly to death (twice because for some quite unknown reason that might actually support the existence of God, I also didn’t have to supply any documentation about my previous Canadian marriage and divorce), the only other thing was my Canadian birth certificate. Although I do have a German passport, one of the requirements for which is being born, and although I’m listed in their electronic books as being born, I still have to prove this beyond simply standing in front of the admin type. And in German. Now, Canada might be officially bilingual, but not when it comes to German and I also come from a part of Canada that tries its best to forget about them having to be officially bilingual. So, my birth certificate is in English. All shiny and glossy like those crap certificates you got for Best Attendance in elementary school, but still in English. Fortunately, however, I already had an official (and expensive) translation of it because of my previous marriage in Not-Not-Bielefeld. (Apparently, being born is very important for getting married anywhere in Germany.)
(At this point, I should mention that getting divorced in Germany, apart from the expensive lawyers, is a far less painful procedure. That I recall, I never had to produce any of this kind of documentation to get divorced. Ok, maybe my ex-wife had to present the marriage certificate that I didn’t have, but I never had to prove that I was born, for instance.)
In the end, I presented all my documents as well as all the translated, authenticated ones of my fiancée in absentia. All that was done with them was to check that they were all there. Not that they were real or accurate or properly translated, just there. Folder open, mostly unread papers filed, folder closed. Could be that they checked them over at their leisure at some later date. Could be that they didn’t.
In any case, did I mention that German admin loves paper?
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