Anmeldung
Registering your address, step by step
Anyone moving within Germany must register their address with the local authority within two weeks. You need two things: an appointment at the Bürgeramt and a Wohnungsgeberbestätigung, the confirmation your landlord is legally required to give you. Without registration there is no tax identification number, and without that your employer withholds tax at the highest rate.
Why everything else depends on it
The Anmeldung enters your address in the official register. It sounds like paperwork, and it is the key to nearly everything else: your tax identification number, a bank account, health insurance, child benefit, a library card, a residents' parking permit. Almost every institution that needs your address checks it against the register.
The expensive part is tax. Without a tax identification number your employer has to apply the least favourable tax class and withholds accordingly. You get it back through your annual tax return, but not in the first months, which is exactly when money is tight after a move.
The deadline is two weeks from moving in. In practice it is rarely pursued if you can show an appointment booking, though a fine is possible. What matters more than the deadline is availability: in Berlin and Hamburg appointments are scarce, and looking late means waiting weeks.
The Wohnungsgeberbestätigung
Nothing happens without this document. In it your landlord confirms that you have moved in, with the address, the date and their signature. They are legally obliged to provide it within two weeks of the move and may not charge for it.
A tenancy agreement does not replace it, although many people assume it does. The office wants this specific form, signed, as an original.
The point where newcomers get stuck is the sublet. If you rent from a main tenant, they issue the confirmation, and for that they need their own landlord's permission to sublet. Many do not have it, and then you are living somewhere you cannot register. Ask before you commit, not after.
What to bring
The list is short, but every item has to be there or you will be sent away.
- Passport or ID card; non-EU citizens also bring the residence permit or visa
- The completed and signed Wohnungsgeberbestätigung, as an original
- The completed registration form, downloadable from your city's website
- Families: marriage certificate and children's birth certificates
- If you are registering a second residence: the details of your main one
Getting an appointment, and what follows
Appointments are booked online on your city's website. In Berlin and Hamburg they are often gone weeks ahead, but it pays to look early in the morning, when cancelled slots reappear. Offices in outer districts usually have more availability than central ones, and you may use any office in your city, not only the one for your address.
The appointment itself takes ten minutes. You leave with the Meldebestätigung, the registration certificate, which is the document banks and employers want to see. The tax identification number arrives by post at your new address a few weeks later, automatically.
Moving from one German address to another, you do not need to deregister first; registering the new address handles it. Deregistration is only for leaving Germany or giving up a secondary residence.