Beginning German Research
Beginning German Research
Researching your family in Germany requires:
1. The name of town they came from in Germany
2. Locating the church records for the town
3. Reading the records (handwriting and language)
The following sections will discuss each step of the process. You can start from the beginning or skip directly to the section that addresses your needs. Each section contains multiple resources for you to choose from. If the internet links don’t work when you click on them, copy and paste them into the address bar of your web browser.
Name of Town
In Germany there was no central repository of vital records; the birth, death, and marriage records were kept in the church of each town. This makes it critical to know the exact town your ancestor came from. Sometimes ancestors said they were from “Stuttgart” when they were actually from a small town near Stuttgart. But since most people would be unfamiliar with the little town, it was easier to say “Stuttgart”. As there are hundreds of villages in the Stuttgart area, again, one must know the exact town.
The name of the town in Germany can be found in various US documents such as newspapers, obituaries, county histories, death records, church records, or naturalization records. If the above resources don’t exist for your ancestor or don’t contain the name of the town, another research strategy is to try to locate any of the above resources for any known relative of the ancestor such as siblings, children, or even in-laws and neighbors.
US resources:
US obituaries:
United States Obituaries
US newspapers:
United States Newspapers
US death records:
How to Find United States Death Records
US church records:
United States Church Records
US county histories:
United States, Histories of Towns, Counties, and States
Naturalization records:
United States Naturalization and Citizenship
Tracing Immigrant Origins
US Immigration websites:
Ellis Island: (51 million immigrants from 1892 to 1954)
Passenger Search
Castle Garden (11 million immigrants from 1820 through 1892)
The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.
Online German emigration database:
This database contains some of the people that emigrated from Wuerttemberg and Baden. If your ancestor is listed on this site, it sometimes lists the town from which they emigrated. This is not necessarily the town in which they were born, but is likely in the same area.
http://www.auswanderer-bw.de/auswanderer/index.php?sprache=en&suche=1
Town locator:
Sometimes you may have a name, partial name or strangely spelled name. This resource may help pinpoint the town:
The JewishGen Gazetteer
Locating church records
Now that you know the town your ancestor came from, you need access to the church records. There are several sources for viewing records:
Online family books:
http://www.online-ofb.de/
http://www.ofb-holzkirch.de/
Online German church records:
This is a new source in the development stage. Not all German archives are participating, not all records have been digitalized, and it has protestant church records only. There is a cost associated with accessing records through this site. You can browse the record titles free of charge and be aware that only the records on a green background have been digitalized. Most of the records on the archion site are the same records available through your local FamilySearch center. It is just easier and more convenient to access these records at home if possible.
https://www.archion.de/
Ancestry.com
There is a collection of online German church records. These are the same microfilmed records that may be available at your local FamilySearch center::
Württemberg, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1550-1985
Ancestry.com
FamilySearch Catalog:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has microfilmed many church records. To see which towns have been microfilmed, you can use their catalog:
FamilySearch Catalog
A “place” search will bring up the microfilmed records for a town.
Be aware that many small town records were kept in nearby larger towns. These towns cannot be searched in the catalog; the names only appear in the notes section of the larger town. For example, you will see below the notes for the town Hohenstaufen. One of the towns mention in the notes is Breitfelderhof. If you try to do a “place” search for Breitfelderhof, it will return “no matching places”. However, as you can see, there are records for Breitfelderhof, they are included in the Hohenstaufen records.
If the “place” search is not successful, you can use an online map to help find the records. Locate your town on the online map and then try inputting the names of nearby towns into the catalog until you bring up the correct town and associated records.
Google Map
Map Quest
The catalog will give the microfilm number and exactly what records are included on that particular microfilm:
The microfilms may be available to be viewed at your nearest FamilySearch Center. If you’ve never visited one, you can locate the nearest one at:
Family Searchlocations
Reading the records
You don’t have to know any German to begin researching; I didn’t know one word when I started. There is a steep learning curve to figure out the handwriting of the old German records because the old German handwriting does not look like modern handwriting. Even modern German people cannot read it. There are a couple of good tutorials to help learn simple German and how to read the handwriting at:
Reading German Handwritten Records Lesson 1: Kurrent Letters
Department of History and the Center for Family History & Genealogy
You can type your name in Suetterlin:
http://www.suetterlinschrift.de/Englisch/Write_your_name.htm?
Alphabet Chart:
Website
Handwriting Guide: German Gothic:
PDF File
Fraktur:
For a printable sheet showing Fraktur letters, click here.
Fraktur German True Type Fonts:
Website
Online German dictionary:
Website
Helpful books:
German-English Genealogical Dictionary by Ernest Thode
If I Can, You Can Decipher Germanic Records by Edna Bentz
Deciphering Handwriting in German Documents by Roger P. Minert
Other resources:
Facebook:
There are several Facebook pages that are tremendous resources for help. These are closed group pages, you must request to join in order to post and read posts.
Baden-Württemberg Genealogy
Germany Genealogy
Genealogy Translations (for German and other languages)
Video:
Fred Held gives an excellent overview of German research:
My Experiences in German Family Research
Article:
Elsie Saar has written an article that contains many useful tips to know in order to decipher German church records:
Article
History:
If you’re interested in the historical background and everyday life of your ancestors in Germany, you must read a book by Teva Scheer called “Our Daily Bread: German Village Life, 1500-1850”.
Funeral Practices:
Generally speaking, one does not find old graves in Germany. Plots were leased for a number of years (10-25), after which the body is exhumed and the grave reused.
Germany Funerary Customs and Practices
Jewish Genealogy:
A supersearch site for Jewish genealogy in Bavarian Swabia:
Website
facebook page: Descendants of Jewish Families from Jebenhausen Wuerttemberg (Germany)
Family Books
Württemberg
On the 1st of January 1808 the King of Wuerttemberg appointed the ministers of the church to act as civil servants with respect to the documentation of vital state of the population. This meant that the ministers had to deliver to the government all information about birth, marriage and death events. The government also specified the form of how this should be done. One of these forms was what is now called family book. This law was valid until 1st of January 1876 when the newly founded civil offices took over this task all over Germany.
Baden
The Grand Duchy of Baden followed Württemberg two years later with some marginal differences. With the 1st of January 1810 the ministers of majority church had to act as civil servants in so far as they had to deliver each year copies of all entries of the church books to the grand ducal government. This had to be done by the minister for all Christian denominations, the minor ones included. An exception was made for the Jewish denomination. Here the 'Rabbiner' was to appointed to keep the vital records like a minister and report them to the Grandduke. Moreover the government demanded that all records had to be written in German only. The use of Latin was now forbidden - by the government! Another gran ducal order demanded that the ministers delivered an alphabetical name register for each year.
Historical Remark
All these acts have to be considered as spillover effects of the ideas of the French revolution, e.g. requiring the complete separation of the church and the state. These revolutionary ideas combined with ideas of Napoleon I about the organization of a modern state were the background of the new form of church books in Baden and in Wuerttemberg after 1800. (Written by Dieter Joos)
The first family book compiled for the town was usually in alphabetical order by family surname. Of course birth dates go further back than 1808 because you had people born in the 1700s living in the town at the time. The book had a page for every family living in the town and I’m assuming the pastor used the original birth, death, and marriage records to compile the books. I don’t know the source that was used for families born outside the town. The pastors added notes about occupations, children’s marriages and emigration. That being said, the family books can vary in terms of accuracy and dates should always be checked against original church records. I’ve inputted from probably hundreds of family books, and you get a feel for the accuracy and completeness of the books in a town by comparing with existing dates and names in my database and if the pastor included children that died young. As a generalization, I’ve found that the larger the town, the less complete and accurate the family books.
After the original alphabetical book, most family books are compiled by marriage date. (There was not a master page or section for each surname with room for additional families to be added later.) So there is no alphabetical way of finding a family. Most family books have an index. Sometimes marriage entries have family book page numbers in the last column of the entry.
Using German microfilms:
Microfilms of German parish records can be confusing even if you can read the script and know some German. To make the experience easier, I would suggest several things:
1. Print out the film notes for the microfilm. These notes will break the film down into sections and will be your guide to reading the microfilm. For example: the notes for a typical microfilm might look like this:
Taufen, Heiraten, Tote 1784-1839 Taufen 1840-1900.
This means you will see Taufen (baptisms) for 1784-1839, then Heiraten (marriages) for 1784-1839, then Tote (deaths) for 1784-1839 and lastly Taufen (baptisms) for 1840-1900.
Even if you don't understand the headings of the records, you can read the dates at the top of the page (although some dates are written in roman numerals and you have to figure those out).
As you scroll through the film, note a break between pages (black space or what looks like the cover of a book). This usually means you are starting a new type of record. If the dates are starting over, that will confirm that you are looking at a new type of record. You probably won't see page numbers on any type of record other than family books.
2. Now that you can find the type of record you are looking for, you have to be clear in your mind exactly what you are looking for. There are frequently several men with the same first and last names having children at the same time. I have even seen men with the same names married to women with the same name having children at the same time. The only way to distinguish between the couples was because the father had his occupation listed after his name, and fortunately each man had a different occupation.
In order to sort the whole mess out, you have to start with the information that you know. If you're lucky, you have a birth date along with the name of the person you are looking for. Roll to the births, look for the correct date, and then try to read the handwriting. If you don't have a birth date, I try to approximate a reasonable date of birth. I actually start looking about 15 years before the approximated date and will continue looking 15 years after the date because they might have been older or younger than you think.
When you have located the birth record of your ancestor, the entry normally lists the name of the father and the mother. Once you have located your ancestor, you need to identify the whole family. Scroll through the records looking for the couple you have identified, writing down all the children and their birth dates as you find them. You should find a birth about every two years. When it appears that you have located all the children born to that couple, you can now approximate the parent's marriage date. (Be aware that many first children were born before the marriage of the parents.)
Roll to the marriages and search for the marriage record of the couple. Marriage records normally include the names of the bride's father and groom's father and the town they were from. The occupation of the groom and/or his father may also be mentioned. If there is not a father's name after the groom, it usually meant that the groom was a widower. So now you get to look for a first marriage, and children of the first marriage. The man's name listed after the bride's name can either be her father or her first husband, be careful, you don't want to get that mixed up. The bride will commonly be referred to as "ehel. tochter" or "ehelich tochter", meaning "legitimate daughter" if this is her first marriage. If the bride was previously married, the word "witwe" (widow), or something similar is usually given.
You keep repeating this process for each generation until the records run out. If you're totally confused with too many names that are alike, you may want to go through the entire birth records and assign each child to a family. Then you'll be absolutely clear who belongs to which family. You are essentially creating your own family book, the pastors did it, so can you.
A note about dates: Often dates are written the form: 17 8bis 1714. This translates as the 17th of October 1714. The month is NOT August, it is October. (Explanation: 7bis= September, 8bis= October, 9bis= November, and 10bis or Xbis = December.) In later years dates were sometimes entered as 5/10/89. This is not 10 May 1889, it is 5 October 1889. The European format for dates is dd/mm/yy, not mm/dd/yy as commonly used in the United States. When using this format, 10th month is October not December as in the earlier system.
Names:
Some common nicknames:
Christoph Stoffel
Angelike or Agnes Engla
Bartholomäus Bartlin or Barthle
Margarethe Gretha
Andreas Enderlin
Johannes Hans/Hannes/Hanss
Christian (also written) Xstian
Georg (also written) Jerg/Jörg