Official certifications

• A certified copy is a copy of a document which has been certified as being a true, complete, and up-to-date copy of the original document at a given date. Certification is achieved by a written statement to that effect, which is then signed and dated by the certifying person on the copy document. The certifying person must have been presented with the original document for certification to be carried out.
• Official certifications must always contain an original official stamp (Dienstsiegel) and an original signature of the certifying person. A copy or scan of your officially certified documents will not be sufficient. A copy is only officially certified if it bears the original certification stamp and is submitted in paper form to the Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, University of Applied Sciences.
• The official stamp may be round or oval and contains a coat of arms. It is not sufficient if authentications bear only a simple stamp.
• Officially certified copies consisting of multiple pages must clearly show that every page has been officially certified in the same process. The official stamp must be visible on all pages. The person certifying the copy attaches the pages to each other in a staggered arrangement and then stamps them with the official stamp. Thus, every page carries a part of the official stamp. With this method, the certification declaration and signature need to be applied to only one page.
• Exception: in the case of certification by a German notary (using a ribbon and an embossed seal), the declaration of certification on only one page is sufficient.

Copies of translations must also be certified. However, translators are not authorised to certify documents in the original language. They may only certify translations made by themselves.

Outside of Germany, the following institutions may officially certify your documents:

• schools and universities issuing the documents,
• the Ministry of Education in your home country,
• German embassies and consulates,
• the department of cultural affairs of the embassy of the country in which the certificate was issued,
• public authorities and notaries authorised to issue official certifications in your home country.

In Germany, any public institution which has an official stamp (Dienstsiegel), is authorised to officially certify documents. These are for example:

• town halls,
• rectories,
• district- and administrative authorities – such as local mayors and local representatives, city and municipal administrations, public offices, town halls and local government authorities,
• courts and notaries.

Please note that public institutions in Germany are allowed to certify documents in a foreign language, but they are not obliged to do so. If you are unable to find a public institution in Germany to certify your documents, please contact the embassy of your country of origin.

Standards for sworn translations

We accept translations of certificates issued by the following bodies:

• sworn translators,
• a department of the issuing school or university authorised to issue such translations,
• institutions outside of Germany authorised to make translations under oath or translations that are admissible in court.

We do not accept translations from standard translation agencies if they are non-certified translations.