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Register of residents - requesting information (simple)

Within the scope of a simple information request, the registration office will provide you with the surname, first names, degree of doctorate and current addresses of the person you are looking for.
If the person is deceased, you will be informed of this.

Whether a registration office gives you information about the data of the person you are looking for is at its own discretion.
Simple information will not be provided if a block on the provision of information has been entered in the population register or if the registration office has reason to believe that this could pose a risk to the interests of the person concerned or another person that are worthy of protection.

Related forms and processes

Prerequisite

  • The person you are looking for must be clearly identifiable from the information you provide. This means that you must already have data on the person concerned.
    This is usually the first name and surname, the date of birth, the gender or the last known address.
  • If you are using the data for commercial purposes, you must provide it.
  • You must declare at the time of the request that you will not use the data for the purposes of advertising or address trading or that you have the consent of the data subject to do so.
  • If you send the request to the registration authority for the purpose of advertising or address trading and the registration authority does not have consent, you must declare to the registration authority that you have consent.
  • The registration authority may require you to provide the consent of the person concerned.
  • There must be no information block in the population register.

Responsible department

the registration authority of the last known place of residence of the person sought

The registration authority is

  • the municipality/town administration of the place of residence or
  • the administrative community or the municipality that performs the duties of the registration authority for the municipality of residence

Procedure

You must apply for simple information from the civil register at the competent office. You do not need a form for this. You can make the application

  • make the application orally at the authority
  • send it by post or e-mail, or
  • or, depending on the service offered by the municipality, online.

Please note: Some registration authorities will only process your application once you have paid the fee.

Note: The municipalities' civil register only contains data on private individuals. You can obtain information about companies or business enterprises from the business register.

It may be that the data of the person you are looking for is subject to an information block. In this case, the registration office will check on a case-by-case basis whether your interest in obtaining information outweighs the confidentiality interest of the person you are looking for.

Note: The data may not be used for the purposes of advertising and address trading.

Required documents

none

Costs

  • for self-disclosure: none
  • for other information from the population register: the costs are based on the administrative fee statutes of the respective municipality.

Note: If you request information from the population register in writing or electronically, you must pay the administrative fees in advance. For example, you can enclose a crossed cheque with your written request.

If you request the information electronically, you can also transfer the fee in advance and enclose the transfer voucher with the request as an electronic attachment.

Detailed information

If you need more detailed data, you can apply for extended information from the population register.

You can also request information from the civil register about several persons who are not named (group information).

Legal basis

 

Release note