Where is the German electronic Commercial Register maintained?
The German Commercial Register (Handelsregister) is maintained electronically by the competent register courts. Each registered company or business is assigned to a register court according to the applicable jurisdiction. Older records from the period before electronic register management may also be available as scanned historical records.
Commercial register information from across Germany can be searched online through the common Registerportal of the German federal states.
Following the transition to electronic register management, the terminology used for register documents also changed. A document showing the main registered information about a company is officially referred to as an „Ausdruck aus dem Handelsregister“. However, the traditional term „Handelsregisterauszug“, meaning Commercial Register extract, is still widely used.
The terminology for official versions also changed. Instead of the older expression „Handelsregisterauszug mit amtlicher Beglaubigung“, the term „Amtlicher Ausdruck aus dem Handelsregister“ is now used for an official Commercial Register extract.
Commercial Register extracts can therefore be provided in different forms:
- amtlich / official
- nicht amtlich / non-official
The German Commercial Register also provides different types of extracts depending on the period of company history you need:
- aktuell / current (Aktueller Abdruck – AD): shows the entries that are currently valid.
- chronologisch / chronological (Chronologischer Abdruck – CD): shows the register entries recorded since the transition to electronic register management, including previous entries.
- historisch / historical (Historischer Abdruck – HD): shows older register information from the period before the transition to the electronic register.
You can order an extract from the German electronic Commercial Register through our service and receive the available electronic document by email in PDF format (order here).
If you require an official or certified document, or a Commercial Register document with an apostille, we can arrange the required version and send the completed document by post or international courier. Where available, we can also provide a scan of the completed apostilled document while the original is in transit.
You can submit your order for a Commercial Register extract here: