German Jewish Records: Difference between revisions

Until their on-line publication in March 2009, the Landesarchiv Baden-Wuerttemberg's collection of microfilmed images of Jewish records could only be viewed on microfilm at the State Archive in Stuttgart. The collection includes birth, marriage, and death registers, family books, and other lists, mostly from the 19th Century. This collection, part of the "Gatermann films", complements the records available at the Family History Library and elsewhere for this area.  

The Gatermann films: During the Nazi Era, Jewish communities all over Germany were required to give up their records to government authorities. This included births, marriages, deaths, circumcision records, cemetery registers, and membership lists. The collected material was microfilmed in 1943-1945 in different sets. The original records are now presumed lost, but the films survived the War and eventually ended up in different archives. The Central Office for Genealogy in Leipzig has films from Prussian Poland and the former East Germany, and the Landesarchiv Baden-Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart has those for the area now called Baden-Württemberg. Bavaria, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony also hold regional collections of these films. Those from Hesse (mostly the former Hesse-Kassel) are on line, and the post-1824 Hesse-Kassel records are indexed as part of the JewishGen Germany Database.

In March 2009 the Landesarchiv in Stuttgart made digital copies of its Gatermann films ([https://www2.landesarchiv-bw.de/ofs21/olf/startbild.php?bestand=5632 Bestand J386] in 126 rolls of microfilm) available on the Interrnet, accessible through an alphabetical list of these records for localities in Baden, Wuerttemberg, and Hohenzollern. This inventory also lists regionally relevant records available at the Central Office for Genealogy in Leipzig, but digital images are only available for the records kept in Stuttgart [Bestand J386]. Microfilm copies of the few records kept in Leipzig are available through the LDS Family History center system. Thus, both sets of records are now accessible to the family historian.