Fight for the right to Austrian citizenship | Letters
Amanda Hopkinson, whose mother, An Austrian Jew, fled to Britain in 1936, seeks a change in nationality lawYour report (Germany will make it easier for diaspora to regain citizenship, 30 August) and my subsequent correspondence with the Austrian embassy in London illustrate the inequality of national laws which vary - by 500-plus years - on the period within which dual nationality may be claimed with another EU country. Ireland and Italy admit applications from grandchildren of their nationals. In the specific case of antisemitic persecution, Spain and Portugal now accept applications from Sephardic descendants of the mass expulsions of 1492.
My mother, an Austrian Jew, fled to Britain in 1936, marrying and settling here in 1938. She had two daughters with my (British) father. According to current Austrian law, applications for dual citizenship are only admissible from "those born before 1st September 1983: where the father is an Austrian citizen at time of child's birth".
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