In many areas of daily life, it becomes necessary to have documents or copies, as well as transcripts or printouts of documents, certified. A prerequisite for the official certification of documents and copies is that the original was issued by a German government agency or that the document or copy to be certified is required for submission to a government agency, e.g., diplomas, medical licenses, and official notices.

Documents and copies may notbe officially certified if

• neither the original was issued by a government agency nor is the certification intended for submission to a government agency (e.g., so-called “Reichsbürger declarations and certificates,” financial documents, inheritance matters),
• the matter falls exclusively within the jurisdiction of another government agency (e.g., civil status records—only the civil registry office; certified extracts from the real estate cadastre—only the cadastre office),
• there is reasonable grounds to believe that the original content of the document—whose photocopy, transcript, or printout is to be certified—has been altered, particularly if this document contains omissions, cross-outs, insertions, alterations, illegible words, numbers, or characters, traces of the removal of words, numbers, and characters, or if the sequence of a document consisting of multiple pages has been disrupted,
• a public certification issued by a notary or a court is required instead of an official certification, and this cannot be replaced by an official notarization,

If the document is not written in German, a certified translation may be required to verify whether there is a prohibition against certification. The provisions regarding the certification of foreign documents through legalization or an apostille remain unaffected.