When I came back home from a trip to the Bolivian jungle yesterday, I had  already received dozens of e-mails from Britons along the lines of “my grandfather was from Germany, can I get a German passport?” As an expert in German citizenship law, I get these kind of questions all the time, but the increase in volume was significant after 23 June 2016. And never before have I gotten so many requests from Britain.

You can also see this in the statistics for my blog:

Clearly a significant spike after the result of the Brexit referendum was announced.

What did people look for? The top 3 posts all deal with German citizenship law.

And where do these questions come from? The overwhelming search volume was from the UK, and I bet that many visitors from Spain, France and the Netherlands were Britons who live there.

As a European, I am sad about Brexit. But for lawyers, these are going to be a few prosperous years.

Here are just a few samples of the questions I received in the days after the Brexit decision. You can enlarge them by clicking on the photos. Answers can be found on my FAQ page about German citizenship.