From today (Friday, November 1) people aged 18 and older will be able to change official records to alter their names and genders or have the gender marker removed altogether.
While there is a mandatory three-month wait between applying and making a personal declaration, the requirement for two psychiatric assessments and a court hearing have been scrapped.
Minors — over the age of 14 — can do so with parental approval, or seek legal recourse. Parents can act on behalf of younger children, but the child needs to be present at the register office and give their assent.
Nyke Slawik, a German parliamentarian and trans woman who helped negotiate the bill, said: “It’s a sign of hope in times where right-wing populist voices are getting louder again and where there is unfortunately a rollback in many countries in terms of the rights of queer people.”
Kalle Hümpfner, policy officer for the German Trans* Association, welcomed the fact that gender self-recognition will now be much more accessible and less costly, saying: “In the assessments, people were forced to divulge a lot of very personal information — information that was shared with the court. There have been many awful reports of people having to talk about their sexual preferences, about their masturbation practices, or their underwear choices.”
Some 1,200 people in Berlin have submitted applications to date, with a similar level of interest reported in other major cities.