Area code The first part or consists of one, two or three letters representing the district where the car was registered, such as
B for
Berlin or
HSK for
Hochsauerlandkreis. These letters basically refer to the
German districts, yet after some changes in the law they are no longer unambiguous. When the current system was introduced, each district was assigned exactly one abbreviation. Whenever a district was merged with another or changed its name, their area code would be redefined. Whereas existing registrations would remain valid, any vehicle registered henceforth could only be issued the current code. In some cases an
urban district and the surrounding non-urban district share the same letter code. Usually, these are distinguished by different letter/digit patterns. The assignment of each code and combination is registered with the (ZFZR). revoking the rule of unambiguity. In consequence, many districts now use more than one code, and certain codes, on the other hand, are not assigned to one district only. Likewise, several cities that share their code with the surrounding rural districts have started using any available codes for both districts without any distinction; the city of
Regensburg, for example, and the surrounding
rural district of Regensburg used different systems with their code
R only until 2007. Germany includes diacritical marks in the letters of some codes, that is the letters Ä, Ö, and Ü, but not
ẞ. For a long time, German codes kept to the rule that a code with an umlaut would prohibit another code with the respective blank vowel, e.g. there could not be a district code
FU as the code
FÜ was already in use for
Fürth. This rule was disregarded in 1996, when
BÖ was introduced for
Bördekreis in spite of
BO existing for
Bochum. However Bördekreis got BK in 2007, probably because of confusions abroad, for fines etc. File:Licence plate N-AR 9 Nuremberg.jpg|N plate with two middle letters from
Nuremberg (Nürnberg) city File:Licence plate N-A 5 Nürnberger Land.jpg|N plate with one middle letter from
Nürnberger Land district File:GERMANY License plates with German letters - Flickr - woody1778a.jpg|Two plates with s, from
Göttingen and
Würzburg Development of the area code When the area codes were introduced, they were intended mainly as a means for police officers to identify speeders and other traffic offenders. However, they soon developed into everyday abbreviations of people's home areas and were cherished or despised. Sometimes, the codes of neighbouring districts were given mocking or spiteful meanings. When districts merged and only one of their codes could be continued, fierce battles might ensue about which one.
The Büsingen exclave Since 1968, a peculiar rule has applied to the municipality of which is a German
exclave completely surrounded by
Swiss territory. Although Büsingen belongs to the German district of
Konstanz, it is part of the Swiss customs area. For this reason, a vehicle registered to a citizen of Büsingen does not bear
KN for Konstanz but
BÜS, signifying to Swiss customs officers that this is in fact a domestic vehicle. There are about 700 cars with this area code, which makes Büsingen the smallest and least-populated registration precinct in Germany.
List of area codes Stickers Registration plates become valid with the official seal of registration. The inspection generally had to be performed every two years, only later brand new cars were granted an extra year before their first technical inspection. Consequently, there were not so many different colours needed, and the pattern was different then. Between 1985 and 2010, a similar yet hexagonal sticker was applied to the front plate, certifying the
emission test which had to be performed separately since March 1985. With a change of laws effective in 2010, the emission test was incorporated into the safety test, so the emission sticker became obsolete. File:Kfz-Zulassungsplakette Stadt Duisburg SecuRasta.jpg|Registration seal, City of
Duisburg, pre-1994 version with city arms File:Stadt Duisburg-KFZ-Zulassungsplakette neue Ausführung.JPG|Registration seal, City of Duisburg,
North Rhine-Westphalia, post-1994 version with state emblem File:Zulassungsplakette LRA Mühldorf am Inn-alt.jpg|Registration seal,
Mühldorf am Inn, pre-1994, Bavaria state arms monochrome File:Zulassungsplakette Coburg.png|Registration seal,
Coburg district, post-1994, Bavaria state arms in colours File:Bundeswehr-Zulassungssiegel.jpg|Bundeswehr registration seal with the Bundesadler File:Plakette Hauptuntersuchung.svg|Safety test sticker File:Plakette Abgassonderuntersuchung.svg|Emission test sticker (1985–2010) File:Kfz-Kennzeichen Deutschland - Toepfchensiegel.jpg|Safety test
(here: valid until June 2007) and registration seal (
Fürth, Bavaria) File:TUEV Plakette 1964.jpg|Ancient safety test marker, September 1964 All these stickers are specially treated to be easily transferred onto the licence plates, but hard to be removed without damaging the plate itself, making them relatively counterfeit-proof. The only licence plates which do not need to carry either seal are repeaters. These are obligatory when the original rear plate is covered, in part or whole, by cargo or attached parts, such as bicycle carriers. Further restrictions are caused by "prohibited" combinations (see below).
Personalised plates For an extra charge of €10.20, vehicle owners can register a personalised identifier, keeping to the above rules. In most cases of personalised plates, owners choose their initials and a number reflecting their date of birth. In this fashion, fictional Mrs , born 2 May 1965 and living in
Essen, might choose
E-UM 2565 for her car. By combining area code and random letters, further possibilities arise, such as a man from
Oldenburg named Olaf, born on Christmas Eve, could choose
OL-AF 2412. A resident of the town of
Pirna might choose
PIR-AT 77, meaning "pirate" in German.
Kiel and
Kleve are two examples of places where the number plate can spell out all of the city name. These
vanity plates can only be made up of the available prefixes and numbers, within the general rules. A
James Bond fan from Hamburg would not be allowed the plate
HH-JB 007 because leading digits 0 (or even
double-0) are not possible; however, he might strive for
HH-J 8007 or
HH-OO 7, imitating digits by letters or vice versa. The owner of a
Volkswagen Polo can certainly show
VW in the middle section, but neither
PO-LO 1995 nor
VW-P0 L01 would be possible, as these prefixes are not issued nor may letters and digits be mixed at will. Nonetheless, a notable variety of personalised number plates can be spotted on German roads. File:BIER (beer) licence plate Germany from Bielefeld.JPG| means beer File:WESEL158.jpg| means money File:AC-DC-1980 License plate Aachen Germany.jpg|
AC/DC is a rock band. File:License plate DI-AL 110.jpg|
110 is the police emergency number File:BA-BY (German license plate).JPG File:Germany license plate GI-RL.jpg
Company cars Whereas private persons are required to register their vehicle with the district authority of their residence, commercial enterprises can choose to establish branch offices from where to register at will – either for financial reasons, as insurance fees are dependent on the address of registration, or to obtain an interesting licence plate. On the other hand, other enterprises show their origin proudly nationwide. One of these is
ADAC, the German automobile association, based in Munich. All their assistance cars, operating from the Alps to the North Sea, bear an
M plate.
Deutsche Bahn, after being
corporatised and relinquishing their (authority plate)
DB, prefers this logo as their middle letters, e. g.
F-DB for the Frankfurt office.
Deutsche Telekom, the largest telecommuncations company, often uses
BN plates, as their headquarters remained in Bonn, where the company originated out of a governmental post & telephone agency. Yet wherever the respective branch office may be, the middle letters
DT are preferred. The
Kone company registers their German vehicles in
Koblenz, with middle letters NE, thus displaying their trademark on their plates.
BMW, owner of
Mini, registers all Mini press/marketing cars in the district of
Minden-Lübbecke which holds the code
MI, to get "MI-NI" number plates for the cars. BMW itself is based in Munich, yet
M-INI plates are not possible to issue, as three letters after the district code are not permitted. From 1970s up to 1994,
Essen city buses owned by city transport company EVAG (Essener Verkehrs-AG) were registered with
E-AT number plates. This may be regarded a pun, as
eat translates into German as . File:ADAC Ford S-Max.JPG|ADAC roadside assistance car File:Deutsche Bahn Bauüberwachung.jpg|Deutsche Bahn (DB) construction supervisor File:Telekom mobility 2 cars.jpg|2 cars of Deutsche Telekom (DT), registered in Münster File:Kone licence plate.jpg|A car of Kone's, unmistakably File:Duobus in electric mode near Essen Wasserturm - geo.hlipp.de - 3997.jpg|Bus E-AT 895, headed for Essen-Kray in 1991
Prohibited combinations Combinations that are regarded as a , which means "offence to moral and customs", are disallowed or otherwise avoided. Those prefixes must not be issued as middle letters now, yet the list of forbidden codes appears to have developed over the decades. In the 1960s, the renowned
ADAC had no qualms with the middle letters
SA, as seen on an archive photo. Although the "infamous" combinations were generally excluded from the list of possible area codes with the introduction of the current system, the French occupation force had between 1945 and 1949 used the combination
SA followed by the double-digit numbers 01 to 08 for the then seven rural districts in the
Saar Protectorate and its capital
Saarbrücken. By 1990, however, codes like these were not taken into consideration for newly formed districts in former GDR: The district used the name of its capital,
Pirna, in its code
PIR, to avoid the use of
SS. When the districts of
Torgau,
Delitzsch and
Oschatz merged into , they combined their initials into
TDO, instead of abbreviating
Northern Saxony as
NS. ) which was issued accidentally On the other hand, the area codes
HH and
AH were chosen for and former district , although they could be interpreted as and , respectively. In everyday German, the letters AH are not regarded as an obvious abbreviation for that name, even less so in the 1950s when the lists were created. Nonetheless, these two-letter codes and the respective numerals 18 and 88, signifying the first and eighth letter of the alphabet, obviously have developed into
Nazi symbols. They are therefore generally avoided in the serial part of licence plates, although they may be found sometimes. Generally, the decision whether or not a certain combination is permitted lies with the respective district authority. In Brandenburg, any plates that are related to Hitler, the Hitler salute, etc. cannot be issued, especially if they would be bearing digits 1888, 8818, 8888 or ending in 88, 888, 188. Nor can the combinations AH 18 and HH 18 be issued to new owners. Some districts however allow these combinations if they are the owner's initials (for example, might be able to get XX-NS 1234). In 2004 in
Nuremberg, a car owner was refused a number plate beginning
N-PD because of the connection to the political party
NPD. After the terror group
National Socialist Underground was uncovered in 2011, the city of
Nuremberg refused number plates beginning with
N-SU and even abolished the respective plates on their own vehicles of (sewage and environmental department). In the 2010s, some districts started banning licence plates with the middle letters IS which resembled the
Islamic State. The
Herford district registration office ceased issuing registration plates with the combination HF-Z in April 2022 to avoid connotations with the use of the letter "
Z" as a symbol for the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. -AB The combinations
STA-SI,
S-ED
HE-IL/
HEI-L,
IZ-AN and
WAF-FE are also forbidden or discouraged, to avoid association with
Stasi, the of the GDR, the
Nazi salute, NAZI backwards and the German word for weapon respectively. Other combinations affected are
BUL-LE (German derogative for police, roughly comparable to
pig),
MO-RD (German word for murder),
TO-D (German word for death),
KI-LL (kill) and
SU-FF (boozing). -X On the other hand, plates that would seem offensive in other circumstances have been allowed, such as the infamous acronym
AC-AB. Since the 1950s, morals and customs have certainly changed, and combinations which may have appeared indecent then do not raise an eyebrow now. Therefore, it is not a problem to get a licence plate with S-EX, Cologne issues
K-TX to taxis and
K-LN to the city's own vehicles. The combinations
B-FA and
BN-AA with any 4-digit numbers are issued by Berlin and Bonn, respectively, to embassy domestic staff without diplomatic status. the area code
G was used for a fictional "large city" () in the
Ruhrgebiet area. However, if the plot is supposed to take place in a defined town or region, the audience would expect cars to show codes of that area on their number plates. When James Bond was driving through Hamburg in
Tomorrow Never Dies, the obviously fake Berlin licence plates on his BMW were soon pointed out. In the time before 2000, it had also been possible to use number plates with bogus identifiers containing the letters B, F, G, I, O and Q, which at that time were not issued in the middle group. Meanwhile, however, all these letters can appear on a real licence plate. In order to state clearly that the plate shown is a fictive one, the crew could use an impossible identifier, such as an in this middle section. Yet another way would be to have a valid registration issued (or at least reserved) by the district authority. ==Registration==