The reform of German citizenship law has been the subject of numerous, emotionally charged debates in recent years. But how has this right developed historically? Gironda traces the development and specific characteristics in a comparison between Germany and Italy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He investigates the extent to which citizenship with its social and political references makes the process of nation building tangible as something real. It becomes clear to which socio-political and socio-economic conditions the states reacted when recording modern citizenship and how closely the survival of the principle of descent was linked to political, social and economic characteristics.