‘Spending 1977 in Düsseldorf earned me a £6,500 German state pension’
Like many people, as she approached retirement Mary Quinton took a closer look at her finances.
As a business studies teacher for 33 of her 66 years, her main pension arrangements were as straightforward as they come.
But Mary, of Norwich, remembered paying into a pension scheme during a year working abroad as a bank clerk in Düsseldorf, Germany, back in the Seventies – and had always wondered what had happened to that money.
Last year, after a dogged back-and-forth with the German authorities, she was surprised to find that despite only paying into the German system for a single year, she was entitled to a pension from the German state which will mean euros into her bank account every month for life – on top of her UK entitlements.
The pension is now worth close to £260 a year – or £6,500 over a 25-year retirement.
Mrs Quinton said: “It certainly wasn’t a quick process, and as my German is now pretty rusty all the paperwork took even longer. But once I realised that I was going to meet the criteria for a pension, I was motivated to see it through and I’m definitely glad I did.”
She had many fond memories of the 12 months from July 1977 she spent in North Rhine-Westphalia, working on her language skills as part of her undergraduate degree at Loughborough University.
In order to claim a German state pension at the minimum level, a worker has to have at least five years of contributions to the German system. But as that was the only time she’d lived in Germany, she was pessimistic about her chances of becoming a German pensioner.
Her first port of call was her former employer, which said it could find no record of her pension contributions – but suggested she make contact with the ‘Rentenversicherung’ – German state pension department – to check her entitlements.
Her application stumbled at the first hurdle when the Berlin bureaucrats said “Nein” – because they could find no evidence that she’d ever worked in Germany. Perhaps no surprise as her last shift had finished some decades before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It was Mrs Quinton’s move. After digging through a host of yellowing paperwork, she sent over payslips proving that she’d paid in 94.50 Deutschmarks per month for 12 months.
A good start, but still a long way short of earning her even the slenderest pension.
However, according to regulations that she was able to read online, any time spent in post-16 education and training, or caring for relatives, can also count towards that minimum number of years.
She said: “I’ve got A-Levels, an undergraduate degree, a teaching qualification, and I took two stints out of the workplace to look after my children. Once I’d added all of those up I was pretty confident I had enough credits to get my pension application over the line.”
Berlin’s mandarins didn’t immediately agree to pay out – as you might expect given all of these took place in the UK.
However, Mrs Quinton pointed out, there wasn’t anything in the regulations requiring that these activities happened within the borders of Germany.
To resolve the situation, Berlin sent her a 30-page form.
She said: “I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but it really did feel like death by paperwork. There were a lot of repeat questions, and tracking down documentary evidence of my school and university term dates was not easy.”
After six months of sending off forms and being asked for more information, Mrs Quinton received a verdict.
As well as her year of payments, her education years were admissible towards her contributions, but not her child-rearing, leaving Mary with 67 admissible months – equal to five-and-a-half years and entitling her to a pension.
She said: “I was thrilled. They rejected my child-rearing years in Britain, saying during this time another EU member state was ‘responsible for me’. But it seems that my education in the UK does count, which I don’t fully understand – but I’m certainly not complaining.”
The Rentenversicherung told her that from April 2023 she would be entitled to €20.95 per month. Overjoyed, she opened a euros-denominated bank account to receive the money.
Closer to that date, more forms followed and she dashed them off.
But then disaster struck when UK bureaucrats intervened to ‘help’ Mrs Quinton claim her overseas pension.
The additional administrative hurdles dragged on for another six months, concluding in a stand-off with both the UK and German authorities claiming they were waiting for documents from the other side – while no euros went into her bank account.
After hounding both sides, she eventually sent the German government a letter begging them to clear the impasse – and her first pension payment arrived shortly afterwards in late 2023, plus her back-payments since April that year.
Now she is receiving €24.59 per month – an inflation-linked increase since the pension was first awarded to her.
She said: “It’s been a struggle but I’m really pleased to be receiving my payments. It’s not a massive amount of money, but it all adds up, especially during a cost of living crisis.
“I only actually paid in the equivalent of €542 during the year I worked in Düsseldorf, so after just 22 months of payments I’m going to be getting back more than I paid in.
“My plan is to leave it in its account, and treat it as holiday spending money.”
The last few days have provided a fresh twist – with an invitation from the German pensions department to apply for a means-tested additional benefit.
Mrs Quinton said: “I’m keen to find out if I might be entitled to that too – but I’m not going to apply right away. If it’s anything like the last time I’m going to need to prepare myself for a very long process.”
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