LetterAgent
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Home > Guides > Addressing a Letter to Germany
LetterAgent cannot mail a letter to Germany, because its recipients must have a United States or Canadian address, but a German address follows a clear pattern: name first, then street and house number, then the five-digit postcode before the city, with GERMANY in capitals on the last line.
| Line | What goes there | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Recipient name | Herr Klaus Weber |
| 2 | Street name and house number | Bahnhofstrasse 12 |
| 3 | Postcode, then city | 10115 Berlin |
| 4 | Destination country, in capitals | GERMANY |
In Germany, the street name comes first and the house number follows it, the reverse of the American habit. "Bahnhofstrasse 12" means number 12 on Bahnhofstrasse, not the twelfth Bahnhofstrasse. Apartment details sit after the house number or on a line above the street: "Wohnung 4" or the abbreviation "Whg. 4" works, as does "12a" for a building suffix. Keep the number tight against the street name with one space, and never move it to the front of the line.
German postcodes, called Postleitzahlen, are five digits and always come before the city name, never after it. The first digit gives a rough region: 0 covers parts of eastern Germany, 1 covers Berlin and nearby areas, 2 covers Hamburg and the northwest, 3 covers central areas, 4 covers the west, 5 covers the southwest, 6 covers the Frankfurt region, 7 covers Stuttgart, 8 covers Munich and the southeast, and 9 covers Nuremberg and the northeast of Bavaria. Old four-digit codes from before 1993 no longer work, so if a contact hands you a four-digit code, ask for the current one.
Write the street, city, and postcode exactly as the recipient writes them, in German spelling, including umlauts where they belong: München, not Munich, on the city line. The country line on the last line can be in English (GERMANY) since that line is read by your own country's sorting offices first, and the German post knows its own country by either name. Do not translate street names: "Bahnhofstrasse" stays as is, even though it means station street. A translated street name can fail to match the sorting database.
German personal titles still matter in formal mail. "Herr" for a man and "Frau" for a woman go before the name, and academic titles like "Dr." sit before that. For a company, put the company name on the first line, then the name of the person or department on the second line, often with "z. Hd." (zu Händen, meaning "attention") before the person: "z. Hd. Frau Schmidt." Family names come last in German personal names, as in English, so do not reorder them. If you only know a first name, that is fine: German delivery does not require a surname, but it helps.
The most common error is copying the American order: city first, then postcode, or house number before the street. Both will confuse a sorting machine and can delay the letter by days. A second error is dropping the postcode, which German sorting relies on heavily. A third is writing "Germany" in mixed case on the last line, which slows routing in your own country. Last, do not add a US-style state: German states (Länder) like Bavaria or North Rhine-Westphalia are not part of the postal address, and adding one can push the city line past the length a machine reads cleanly.
Put your return address in the top left corner, with your own country name in capitals on its last line. If the letter cannot be delivered, the return address is the only way it comes back, and international returns take a while. Use a printed label or clear block capitals for the address block, and leave the bottom right area of the envelope clear for sorting marks. If your post office offers an airmail marking, add it: surface mail to Germany takes far longer, and the marking keeps the letter in the air stream.
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