German Citation Style: Footnote Referencing with Examples

You are reading German scholarship, or writing at a German university, and the department expects the German citation style: references in footnotes at the bottom of the page rather than in brackets in the running text. That is where the questions start. What goes in the first footnote, what goes in every later one, and when is „ebd.“ enough?

In the German citation style every reference sits in a footnote, signalled by a superscript number in the text. The first mention of a source carries the full reference with all bibliographic details, and every later mention carries a short reference made up of surname, an identifier for the work and the page number. Every example on this page uses the same source, so you can compare footnote, short reference and bibliography entry side by side.

📌 Key takeaways

• The German citation style references every source in a footnote.
• The first footnote for a source carries the full reference.
• From the second mention onwards a short reference is enough.
• „Ebd.“ refers only to the footnote immediately before it.
• The German citation style is a convention, not a standard.

What is the German citation style?

The German citation style is a referencing system in which every source reference sits in a footnote at the bottom of the page. A superscript number after the referenced passage points to that footnote, and the footnote gives the author, title, publication details and page number.

The main text therefore stays free of brackets. That is the practical reason why subjects with many sources per page have kept the system: history, law, theology and parts of the humanities. Anyone putting author and year in brackets inside the sentence is working with Harvard or APA instead.

Other names for the German citation style

The German citation style has no official name, because no body exists that could award one. German university handbooks describe the same rules under „Fußnotenzitierweise“, „klassische Zitierweise“ or simply „Zitieren mit Fußnoten“. In English it is usually called footnote referencing or the notes system. What British readers should not assume is that it matches any single British style: OSCOLA and MHRA are footnote systems too, but each has its own rules.

How it compares with Harvard and APA

The difference between the German citation style and the bracket systems lies in where the reference sits, not in what it contains. The same bibliographic data ends up either at the foot of the page or in the middle of the sentence. A bibliography can therefore move between systems almost unchanged, while an in-text reference cannot.

MHRA and OSCOLA both reference in footnotes, but they order the elements differently and put the forename before the surname. The German citation style is a separate system, not a German version of either. For the effect on a single book reference, see our guide to citing books.

Is the German citation style a standard?

The German citation style is not a standard but a disciplinary convention. There is no central manual as there is for APA, and no valid DIN specification behind it. What binds you is the handbook of your department, and those handbooks differ on details that look trivial at first sight.

British readers have a useful comparison at home. The Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities reached its fifth edition in March 2026, and the MHRA Style Guide reached its fourth edition in 2024, replacing the third edition of 2013 in February of that year. Both are documented, dated and revised. The German citation style has no equivalent authority, which is exactly why two German departments can give you two different sets of rules.

Full reference and short reference: what goes in which footnote

The full reference sits in the first footnote for a source and carries every bibliographic detail. Each later footnote for the same source carries the short reference, which shrinks to the surname, an identifier for the work and the page number.

German handbooks call these two forms Vollbeleg and Kurzbeleg, or Vollzitat and Kurzzitat. Both pairs mean the same thing. Every example below references the same passage: Anna Weber, „Empirisch forschen. Ein Leitfaden für die Abschlussarbeit“, third edition, published in Wiesbaden by Beispielverlag in 2024, page 87.

Footnote 1, full reference on first mention: Vgl. Weber, Anna: Empirisch forschen. Ein Leitfaden für die Abschlussarbeit, 3. Auflage, Wiesbaden: Beispielverlag 2024, S. 87.

Footnote 2, short reference from the second mention: Vgl. Weber 2024, S. 87.

Footnote 3, same source immediately afterwards: Vgl. ebd., S. 88.

Note that the title stays in German and is not translated. So do the abbreviations: „Vgl.“ marks an indirect quotation, that is a passage you have paraphrased, and it corresponds to the English „cf.“. For a direct quotation in quotation marks it is dropped, and the footnote starts with the name. „S.“ stands for Seite and does the work of „p.“.

The German citation style with several authors

Several authors are separated by a forward slash in the form „Surname, Forename/Surname, Forename“. Where the cut-off falls varies between handbooks. The citation guide of the History Department at LMU Munich lists up to three names in footnotes and gathers any further names under „u. a.“ or „et al.“, while the bibliography there carries every name in full.

Two authors, full reference: Vgl. Weber, Anna/Schulze, Paul: Empirisch forschen. Ein Leitfaden für die Abschlussarbeit, 3. Auflage, Wiesbaden: Beispielverlag 2024, S. 87.

Four authors, full reference: Vgl. Weber, Anna/Schulze, Paul/Meier, Peter u. a.: Empirisch forschen. Ein Leitfaden für die Abschlussarbeit, 3. Auflage, Wiesbaden: Beispielverlag 2024, S. 87.

Four authors, short reference: Vgl. Weber u. a. 2024, S. 87.

Some handbooks separate names with a semicolon or with „und“ instead of the slash, and some cut off at the third name. Which variant you choose matters less than keeping it consistent across the whole piece of work.

Short reference with year or with short title?

The short reference comes in two widespread forms, and most guides show only one of them. One shortens to surname, year of publication and page; the other shortens to surname, short title and page. Which one applies to you is set out in your department handbook.

The year form is the more common one outside the humanities. The short-title form is standard in German history departments, and there is a substantive reason for it: anyone working with source editions and series regularly has several titles by the same author from the same year in front of them. A year alone no longer distinguishes them.

Short reference with year: Vgl. Weber 2024, S. 87.

Short reference with short title: Vgl. Weber, Empirisch forschen, S. 87.

The citation guide of the History Department at LMU Munich recommends taking the first meaningful noun of the title, or at most three words from it, and requires that the choice stays unchanged throughout the work. For „Empirisch forschen. Ein Leitfaden für die Abschlussarbeit“ that means „Empirisch forschen“ every time, never „Leitfaden“ on one page and „Abschlussarbeit“ on the next.

💡 Tip

Fix your short titles before you start writing rather than afterwards. Reference managers such as Zotero and Citavi have a dedicated field for them. Otherwise three spellings of the same source end up in the finished text, and at proofreading stage you will only find them with the search function.

Placing footnote numbers: position, capitals, full stop

The footnote number sits directly after the passage it refers to, with no space before it. If the reference covers the whole sentence, the number follows the full stop. If it covers only a word or a clause, it sits inside the sentence, immediately after that part.

This is where the short answer „always after the full stop“ falls down. It holds for the normal case, in which a footnote supports the whole preceding sentence. As soon as you are referencing a single term, the number moves into the sentence, because otherwise it stays unclear what the source is actually vouching for.

Where the number goes after a quotation

After a direct quotation the number follows the closing quotation mark. If the quotation makes up the whole sentence, the full stop sits inside the quotation marks and the number comes after them. If the quotation is only the final part of the sentence, you close the quotation marks, add the full stop and then the number. The MHRA Style Guide sets out the equivalent British rule in section 2.16: the number follows any punctuation mark except a dash, which it precedes.

Footnotes start with a capital and end with a full stop

Every footnote begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, even when it is only three words long. That is why it is „Ebd.“ at the start of a footnote and lower-case „ebd.“ after a preceding „Vgl.“. Several sources in one footnote are separated by a semicolon.

„f.“ and „ff.“ after page numbers

The abbreviations „f.“ for the following page and „ff.“ for the following pages are common but imprecise: after „ff.“ it stays open whether two or twenty pages are meant. The LMU Munich citation guide advises against them and asks for the range instead, so „S. 87–89“. Giving the range is never wrong in either system.

„Ebd.“ and „a. a. O.“: when the abbreviations are allowed

„Ebd.“ is short for „ebenda“ and does the work of the English „ibid.“. It replaces the short reference when you are referring to exactly the source named in the footnote immediately before. If only the page changes, you add it, so „Ebd., S. 88.“.

Two conditions decide whether the abbreviation holds. First, the footnote you mean has to sit immediately before, not three footnotes further up. Second, it must name a single work only. If the previous footnote lists two titles, it is no longer clear which one is meant, and the LMU Munich citation guide rules „ebd.“ out for that case.

Why British style guides are retiring „ibid.“

British referencing has moved further in the opposite direction than German practice has. The fifth edition of OSCOLA, published in March 2026, removed the use of „ibid“ altogether; the publisher’s own summary of key changes lists that removal explicitly. The MHRA Style Guide is almost as strict: section 7.12 states that „loc. cit.“ and „op. cit.“ are too vague to be used at all, and that „ibid.“ should be used very sparingly.

An abbreviation that sends the reader back through the footnotes is saving effort in the wrong place.

German „a. a. O.“, short for „am angegebenen Ort“, is the direct counterpart of „op. cit.“ and carries the same weakness: it points to a source referenced somewhere earlier, not necessarily in the footnote immediately before. If your handbook says nothing about it, the short reference is the safe choice. It is valid in every guide linked from this page.

German citation style: examples for four source types

The four source types that come up most often in a dissertation follow the same pattern and differ only in the details that are added. A book reference stays shortest; a chapter in an edited collection runs longest, because two works are nested inside one another.

Each example below shows the full reference, that is the form of the first footnote. The short reference is the same in all four cases, namely „Vgl. Weber 2024, S. 87.“. Order and punctuation may differ in your department handbook.

Citing a book in the German citation style

For a book you give the author, title and subtitle, edition, place of publication, publisher, year and page. The first edition is never named, every later one belongs in the reference, because page numbers shift between revised editions. Some handbooks drop the publisher and name only the place.

Full reference: Vgl. Weber, Anna: Empirisch forschen. Ein Leitfaden für die Abschlussarbeit, 3. Auflage, Wiesbaden: Beispielverlag 2024, S. 87.

Citing a chapter in an edited collection

For a chapter the author of the chapter comes first, followed by „in:“ and the details of the volume with its editors. The page range of the whole chapter goes at the end, and the specific page you are citing is added with „hier:“. Without that split it stays unclear which page you actually read.

Full reference: Vgl. Weber, Anna: Stichproben in der Praxis, in: Schulze, Paul (Hrsg.): Empirisch forschen. Ein Leitfaden für die Abschlussarbeit, 3. Auflage, Wiesbaden: Beispielverlag 2024, S. 80–95, hier: S. 87.

Citing a journal article

For a journal article the publisher and place of publication drop out. In their place come the title of the journal, the volume number, the year in brackets and, where needed, the issue number. The page range of the article belongs in the reference, with the cited page again marked by „hier:“.

Full reference: Vgl. Weber, Anna: Stichproben in der Praxis, in: Zeitschrift für Methodenlehre 12 (2024) 2, S. 80–95, hier: S. 87.

Citing an online source in a footnote

For an online source you add the URL or DOI and the date you last accessed it. The LMU Munich citation guide requires both, and asks in addition that the hyperlink formatting be removed so that the reference does not appear underlined and in blue among the footnotes.

Full reference: Vgl. Weber, Anna: Stichproben in der Praxis, in: Beispielportal, 12.03.2024, www.beispielportal.de/stichproben, Zugriff 15.08.2026.

Footnotes are only half the job once a source has no print edition. Our guide to citing internet sources sets out the six parts of a web reference and explains when an access date is required.

The bibliography in the German citation style

The bibliography lists every work used, in alphabetical order by the author’s surname and in full. Two things separate the entry from the footnote: the „Vgl.“ is dropped, and the page you cited does not appear.

Page numbers are where most bibliographies come apart. A monograph carries no page reference at all. An article or a chapter carries the full page range of the contribution, not the single page you happened to cite.

Entry in the bibliography: Weber, Anna: Empirisch forschen. Ein Leitfaden für die Abschlussarbeit, 3. Auflage, Wiesbaden: Beispielverlag 2024.

Bibliography, Literaturverzeichnis or Quellenverzeichnis?

German history departments treat „Bibliografie“ as the umbrella term covering both a list of primary sources and a list of secondary literature. If you have worked with archival material, newspapers or source editions, the Quellenverzeichnis comes before the Literaturverzeichnis. In subjects without those source types there is only one list, and Bibliografie and Literaturverzeichnis then mean the same thing. British footnote systems keep the single heading „Bibliography“, as the footnote referencing guide of the University of Hull shows.

⚠️ Watch out

Every work that appears in a footnote has to appear in the bibliography, and the other way round. Check that in both directions before you submit. A title in the list that is never referenced stands out to a marker just as much as a footnote with no matching entry.

Common mistakes in the German citation style

Most marks lost on formal grounds are lost not to wrong details but to inconsistent ones. Four mistakes come up often enough to justify one dedicated pass through the footnotes before you submit.

All four can be fixed in an hour if you read the footnotes as a block rather than one at a time while writing. How heavily your institution weighs formal errors is set out in its assessment regulations.

Mixing two referencing systems in one piece of work

Footnote references and bracket references belong to two different systems. Mixing them costs marks even when every individual detail is correct. It usually happens when text blocks are carried over from earlier essays written to a different specification.

Using „ebd.“ across an intervening footnote

No other footnote may stand between the footnote with „ebd.“ and the source it means. Late insertions are the usual cause: you add a sentence with a new source, and the „ebd.“ below it suddenly points at the wrong work. Check the following footnote after every insertion.

Changing the short title along the way

If the same source appears once as „Weber, Empirisch forschen“ and once as „Weber, Leitfaden“, it looks like two works. Set the short title once and leave it alone. With the year form the same applies to works by the same author from the same year, which are distinguished as „2024a“ and „2024b“.

Translating German titles into English

A German book title stays in German in the reference, and so do „Hrsg.“, „Auflage“ and „S.“. Translating them breaks the link between your reference and any library catalogue, and a marker checking the source will not find it. If a translation helps your reader, put it in square brackets after the original title rather than in place of it.

Conclusion

The German citation style is simpler than its reputation suggests: a full reference on first mention, short references after that, and a bibliography carrying the same details without the page you cited. The work is not in the rules but in applying them the same way across a hundred footnotes.

Whatever this guide shows, the handbook of your department decides, and it decides even where it departs from the patterns above. If there is no handbook, pick one form and hold to it. This article is not a substitute for advice from your supervisor.

What to read next

• Want the basics from the start? How to cite correctly: the guide
• Does your department want bracket references after all? The Harvard citation style explained
• Referencing a book right now? Citing books: rules and examples

Still missing your own data for the dissertation?

Data from a survey you ran yourself is not referenced as an external source; you describe it in the methods chapter instead. With empirio.ai, an online survey tool from Germany, you can collect it for free. How to build the questionnaire is set out in our guide to creating a questionnaire.