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We consider the adaptive finite element discretization of parameter estimation problems for nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations. The idea is to use a gradient method on the finite-dimensional parameter space for the minimization of the least-squares residual. Since the gradient involves solution of partial differential equations, it is not accesable, and is replaced by an approximation obtained by finite elements. This results into a perturbed gradient method. We use an (a posteriori) error estimator to control the accuracy of the gradient approximation and propose an algorithm, which links the estimator to the progress of the iteration. We show convergence of the algorithm under typical structural assumptions.