File No. 6878/5.

The Acting Secretary of State to Ambassador Tower .

No. 731.]

Sir: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your No. 1240, of September 23 last, in reply to the department’s No. 693, of August 7 last, regarding the methods to be pursued in cases of marriages between Americans in Germany or on German territory.

The department notes your suggestion that an understanding might be reached upon this point with the Imperial German Government, “provided it could be authoritatively shown by a communication from the honorable the Secretary of State that there is no law in the United States which authorized any magistrate or other officer to issue a certificate setting forth that no impediments exist in any specific case to the entering into a marriage contract, and therefore as such a certificate is not required or provided for by American law, no authority exists for it, and it is impossible for an American citizen to produce it.”

While it might be possible for the department authoritatively to show that there is no law of the Federal Government authorizing any magistrate or other officer to issue the certificates required by the German law, and that such certificates are not required or provided for by any law of the Federal Government, it could not undertake to certify that there is no law in any one of the States of the Union authorizing the issuance or requiring the production of the certificates named. All the department could do in the latter case would be to address a circular letter to the governors of the various States and Territories and inquire whether the laws of their respective States and Territories provide for the issuance of certificates of competency as required by the German law, as was done on April 20, 1900 (see Moore’s International Law Digest, Vol. II, p. 542). Should the replies received from all the States indicate that no such law existed, the department could then certify that no law providing for the issuance of the certificates existed in the several States up to the date of the letters of their respective governors.

In answer to an inquiry on the subject from the German embassy, Secretary Hay stated, February 21, 1900, that “so far as this department is advised, there is no provision made by the laws of the Federal Government or by any of the States and Territories thereof for the [Page 526] issuance by any magistrate of any certificate of the kind mentioned in your note.” (Foreign Relations, 1900, p. 522.)

In view of the fact that strict compliance with the “certificate” requirement of the German marriage laws seems to be practically impossible for an American citizen, it might be well for you to bring informally to the attention of the Imperial German Government the difficulties arising in the way of American citizens, temporarily residing in Germany, in meeting the requirements of the present German law in regard to the certificates named, to the end that an expression of the views of that Government may be obtained, and if practicable an arrangement made which will afford a satisfactory solution of the difficulties now existing.

I am, etc.,

Robert Bacon.