I admit that just a few years ago, I finally had a need for German archival holdings (in this case, older vital records from one of the Berlin civil registration offices). And I’ll further admit that I approached the task of ordering the records for a professional client with a bit of trepidation—not knowing how the Germans would respond, if at all (I feared that they were like their American bureaucratic counterparts).
So I somewhat tentatively e-mailed my request and received a response the next day saying that I could indeed make my request by e-mail, but that I needed to know the correct one of the many civil registration offices in Berlin. Fortunately, I had successfully determined this from some of the same online tools listed in this book. I didn’t receive a response, so I waited a few days before e-mailing again. As it so happened, photocopies of the vital records had already been mailed, along with an invoice requesting a deposit in the archive’s bank account. I had underestimated German efficiency—and the German registrar’s trust that payment would be remitted! I also realized that I better find out how to get the payment made in the form they requested (which is the subject of the Paying the Bill in Germany sidebar).
We’ve looked at some of the repositories in previous chapters, mostly concerning their partnerships with major online outfits such as FamilySearch.org <www.familysearch.org> and Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com>, but many more organizations and repositories also have holdings available online or a noteworthy Web presence. While you may not yet be able to receive the instant gratification of finding digitized records on these sites from the comfort of your home office, the ability to communicate electronically with local society and repository experts will help point you in the best direction to focus your research. Some of these organizations can be found in the Vereine portal on Genealogy.net <wiki-de.genealogy.net/Portal:Vereine>, profiled in chapter 6.
Genealogical research is not done in a vacuum. One of the biggest themes in the industry over the past few years has been collaboration, in particular online collaboration. While you’ll have to avoid many pitfalls (e.g., blind faith in the information found across the Internet), many reputable societies and organizations have online (and offline) resources available that can help you in your German ancestry research, and these groups create invaluable networks of researchers. This portion of the chapter will focus on some of the most helpful and prominent organizations, first in America, then in Europe.
With so many Americans having German-speaking ancestry, German-focused genealogical organizations across the country are available to help you. Some are specialists in Germans from particular geographic areas while others cater more generally to German genealogists. Some of these organizations have well-developed websites with helpful databases, while others have a lot of FAQ-type information online. But all of the groups listed in the following sections have Internet contact points for you to consider as springboards, and the members of these groups may be able to answer some of your questions.
According to the group’s mission statement <www.ahsgr.org/index.htm>, the AHSGR is “an international organization dedicated to the discovery, collection, preservation, and dissemination of information related to the history, cultural heritage, and genealogy of German settlers in the Russian Empire and their descendants.” Membership entitles one to reduced rates on research in the society’s records and document translation services as well as reduced prices on many of the media available from the society. When you join, you will also be listed in the society’s surname/place directory, which you can search for like-minded researchers.
Located in Philadelphia, the GSP <www.germansociety.org> was founded in 1764 to protect German immigrants from exploitation as they traveled to the American colonies as well as after they arrived. Today, the society dedicates its efforts to preserving German heritage, going so far as to offer scholarships for undergraduate students majoring in German language and literature. Members subscribe to the society’s quarterly newsletter, borrow items at their library (which holds seventy thousand volumes), and receive discounts to some events.
Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, the GGS <www.ggsmn.org> has a library holding twenty-two hundred books and periodicals. The society publishes a quarterly journal and has a surname database to help researchers get up to speed with where others have gotten so far on a specific family. An annual membership is relatively inexpensive, coming in at fifteen US dollars as of the time of writing.
MAGS <www.magsgen.com/index.php> strives to facilitate research on Germanic genealogy in the mid-Atlantic region. The group has a library inside the Shenandoah County Library in Edinburg, Virginia, and members receive a quarterly newsletter as well as free consultations with professional genealogists. Annual memberships are very affordable.
PalAm <www.palam.org> promotes the study of Germanic immigration to North America. They hold an annual conference and have seven regional chapters across the country (in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania). The Palatines sponsor a quarterly scholarly journal and provide fee-based research and translation services. In addition, a name index to the Palatine Immigrant journal has been published four times per year since the United States bicentennial in 1976.
The SGGS <www.sggs.us> publishes the acclaimed quarterly journal Der Blumenbaum and provides research assistance to those seeking German ancestors. The society also hosts monthly meetings that feature informational lectures from leading professional researchers in the field.
While not as widespread or well-known, many other groups in the United States have resources that you might find useful. Many of these focus on particular states or regions. Pennsylvania actually has two of these notable regional resources. The Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center <sites.google.com/site/pagermanchc/home>, right in the middle of Pennsylvania German country at Kutztown University, hosts annual events and preserves historic artifacts designed to showcase Pennsylvania German culture and history. The Pennsylvania German Society (PGS) <www.pgs.org/default.asp> has a similar mission. The PGS publishes a journal several times per year and hosts an annual meeting.
Farther west, the German Interest Group—Wisconsin <www.gig-wi.com> has a surname database and a periodic newsletter for a nominal fee, while the German-Texan Heritage Society (GTHS) <www.germantexans.org> down south promotes the preservation of German cultural heritage in Texas, hosts an annual conference, and puts out a quarterly journal.
Two other resources focus on more specific groups of immigrants. Not to be confused with the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, the Germans from Russia Heritage Society (GRHS) <www.grhs.org/index.html> is dedicated to bringing together people interested in discovering the unique history of Germanic Russians, with a library in North Dakota and a quarterly magazine. Even more of a niche group, the Society of the Descendants of the Schwenkfeldian Exiles <www.schwenkfelderexilesociety.org> is dedicated to the 209 people who followed the Schwenkfelder Church in Silesia and decided to head to the New World when facing religious persecution in the 1730s.
As was noted earlier in the chapter, many genealogy groups based in Germany have websites that “hook onto” the Genealogy.net web portal. Some, however, don’t have that connection but do still have information helpful to researchers for particular areas of Germany. These resources can be especially helpful to you once you’ve placed your ancestors in the old country.
In addition to the resources listed in this section, the site Many Roads <www.many-roads.com/2014/12/14/german-genealogical-societies>, while focusing on the Rabideau-Hensse family history, boasts a helpful list of German genealogical societies, many of which specialize in a particular region of Germany. Browse through it if you’ve already located your ancestor’s village of origin.
As its name suggests, the AMF <www.amf-verein.de> is dedicated to family history research in Central Germany, as well as Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The group maintains an archive in Leipzig and also has an online store that sells electronic books (most—if not all—of the books are written in German). The group’s website features a link to a database where you can search to see for members researching the same family name/place combination. Members also receive a quarterly magazine.
This group has an extensive online database <www.die-maus-bremen.de/index.php> that includes civil registration records from around Bremen, more than thirty thousand citizenship applications spanning from the 1600s through 1900, some very old tax lists, and wills covering 1599 through 1899 (just to name a few of the site’s resources). The MAUS publishes a semiannual newsletter and consults with members about research problems they are facing.
If you have the chance to visit a German archive, some of the most prominent of which are described below, remember a couple of important guidelines. First, you should always endeavor to make an appointment, as the records you need could be stored offsite and have to be ordered ahead of time. In addition, professional researchers at the archive could be limited in time. Second, you should not expect the employees at the archive or repository will have the time or any desire to help you read and interpret the records you may find, so come prepared with historical context and whatever documents you may need to help you interpret records (such as a German script and Fraktur reference).
Another important note is that archived civil registration records for births, marriages, and deaths could quite possibly be held at the local Standesamt. In order to access these records, you will need to get in touch with the local registrar, and as outlined in chapter 9, German federal law dictates “blackout” time periods before records are freely available: 110 years for births, 80 years for marriages, and 30 years for deaths. Some of the local offices as well as the larger archives will be willing to see if a record exists before requiring payment, then they will bill the requester along with a copy of the record. To find the correct civil registration office, start by finding the village in Meyers Gazetteer of the German Empire on Ancestry.com <search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1074>. In write-ups about each village, Meyers will indicate whether the village had its own office or, if not, to which other town’s office it was attached. Then you can browse the listings held by modern-day Lande, keeping in mind that your ancestors’ records may be in small city archives or in an archive with statewide holdings.
In this section, I’ll outline some resources you can use to find civil registrations and other records kept by the government.
Archivportal is a highly useful service of the German Digital Library, especially if you’re struggling to find your ancestors in other archives’ records. The site <www.archivportal-d.de> serves as a front to the complex archival structure in Germany. The database is organized by place, so the first step (as always) will be locating a village of origin for the ancestor in question. Next, you should gather basic genealogical data about that person using church or civil registration records before you attempt to consult these types of archives (though, in certain cases, the church and civil registration records may be held in these archives). That said, once you have the basic information about someone, the information in the regional and local archives can help you learn more granular information about the lives of your forebears. You can search for a place directly, but keep in mind that information from one village or town could certainly be kept in an archive in a neighboring place.
The best way to go about finding an archive of interest is probably to just browse its listings by modern-day German Land.
Some of the many archives in Germany have particularly good digital assets, and some are worth noting separately because their holdings are essential for research (whether digital or not). They range from Germany’s federal archive (unfortunately, not nearly the equivalent of America’s National Archives and Records Administration) to a couple of digital libraries focusing on documents from the western German states of Hessen and Rheinland-Pfalz. Here, I’ll outline some of these valuable digitized resources.
The German Federal Archive <www.bundesarchiv.de/index.html.de> does not centrally store civil registration records from across the country; those records are kept at the Standesamt level. However, the Federal Archive can be very useful in the context of military record research. Another large record set is the Ahnenpass collection, which were the multigenerational ancestor charts required to be filed by potential Nazi Party members to prove Aryan descent.
As morose as this context is, the information contained in them can be useful. In order to see if the records you seek are digitized, visit Invenio <invenio.bundesarchiv.de/basys2-invenio/login.xhtml>, which is the archive’s online catalog. After registering, you will be able to search and browse the archive’s holdings. Please note that all records in the archive were microfilmed and are available for viewing at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland, so if the records you seek are not digitized, contacting the stateside archives would be a more efficient route than attempting to access the records in Berlin.
The holdings at this repository <www.archiv.sachsen.de/6319.htm> are mainly focused on the German state of Saxony, but they also hold material applicable to the wider German-speaking realm. The holdings have a vast scope, as they’re organized by the German equivalent of a US state. But for people who live too far from the archive to visit, the staff will respond to written requests for lookups that take less than an hour. In order to determine if the archive holds something of interest to you, you can search its holdings using the Suche in Archivbeständen link. Many of the archive’s church book holdings have been microfilmed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so look there first for the village you seek.
If you have German-speaking ancestors from eastern central Europe in countries like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, or Slovakia, this archive is for you. Its holdings <www.herder-institut.de/en/home.html> are vast and include records like church books that were microfilmed during World War II. Some records have also been digitized; you can search the catalog at <www.herder-institut.de/dshi/Bestaendeuebersicht/index.htm> by clicking Suche.
Building from chapter 9’s Heimat Tic Tac Toe, in which you identified the jurisdictions under which your ancestor’s village lay at various times, check out this list of potential types of archives you may encounter (and should seek out) when investigating your ancestors:
This site <lagis.online.uni-marburg.de/en> has a fully functioning English menu, plus atlases, maps, photographs, and gazetteers to help researchers gain a better understanding of what daily life was like in Hessen.
This repository <www.pfalzgeschichte.de> boasts a three-hundred-thousand-sheet emigration file containing about one million individual records, perhaps its most valuable genealogical resource. The Institute also has forty thousand books on regional history of the Palatinate, newspapers, and photographs. Many of the records aren’t available online, so you’ll need to contact the archive (see the Kontakt link along the right side of the page).
If you’re able to locate your ancestor or his village of origin in the digital holdings of this repository <www.dilibri.de>, you may be able to paint some colorful details about your family’s historical life in the Palatinate. One of the highlights of this website is its fully functional English version. Holdings include books, illustrations, maps, and newspapers.
You’ve already learned about the large site Archion <www.archion.de> (in chapter 8) for records from many of the German Protestant state churches as well as efforts such as Matricula <www.icar-us.eu/cooperation/online-portals/matricula> (in chapter 10) that are digitizing some Roman Catholic records. And megasites such as Ancestry.com have created access to many church records of German ethnics in America. But finding out Roman Catholic records (and even some Protestant resources) in other areas requires using a smattering of smaller, church-run sites. This section gives a rundown of the websites of such church archives.
The Roman Catholic Church is somewhat prominent in the western part of Germany (along its borders with France, Luxembourg, and Belgium) and in the southern part of Germany (along its borders with Switzerland and Austria). If you have ancestors from these areas, they were possibly Catholic. Be sure to scrutinize stateside records as much as possible to try to determine if your immigrant ancestor and his family were Catholic or Protestant before doing too much focused research on one denomination or the other in Germany.
If you find that your German ancestor was indeed Catholic, you can search the German Catholic Church’s website to see a map of the ecclesiastical borders <www.katholisch.de/kirche/Deutschland>. Click on the map to see each clerical district’s headquarters address, e-mail address, and website, plus the name of the bishop in charge. Each one of these parishes has its own organization and archive, and you may find that some parishes are more helpful or organized than others. Also keep in mind that the records for the ecclesiastical province of Passau along the border with Austria are contained in the online repository Matricula <www.data.matricula.info/php/main.php>, profiled in chapter 10.
Many of the parishes of the Evangelisch Church in Germany are participating in the Archion project, detailed in chapter 8. However, the following archives are not currently participating in Archion:
While you won’t have any perfect options when it comes to making payments to German individuals or archives, completing complex international money transfers is definitely a case of “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Part of the reason for this is that, per insight from Europe-based professional genealogist Glen W. Covert, the Single Euro Payments Area or SEPA (which includes Germany and Austria) works opposite of how most Americans do business. In the United States, a person owed debt sends his address to the debtor, then the debtor responds with a payment that can be deposited. Within the SEPA, however, the person who is owed money provides the debtor with his bank account information rather than his address. The debtor then directly transfers the money from his account to the account of the person to whom he owes money.
Credit cards are likely your best option, as credit card companies generally guarantee transactions against fraud. However, not all American credit cards will automatically work internationally (some require a fee to do so), plus German archives generally will not accept credit cards. This leaves to sort through other money transfer services, such as:
As has been noted in part 2’s chapters on major websites, many of the records from Protestant denominations most frequently used by German ethnics in America have been digitized by one of the major websites, such as those preserved by Ancestry.com’s deals with the Evangelical Lutheran Archives as well as the many church records in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Notably, the Moravian Church’s two archives have not gone the collaboration route, and we’ll cover these resources in this section. In the case of many other denominations, whatever archives system they have is still off the online grid.
The Moravian Church Northern Province’s archive <www.moravianchurcharchives.org> has records from congregations in California, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If you have determined that your ancestor was a member of a Moravian congregation, this would be the place to look for possible records. If you are not able to visit the archive yourself just east of Allentown in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, you can request research. You can fill out the online research request form, and the archive will get in touch with you with a cost estimate.
If you have Moravian ancestors that are from the southern half of the American colonies, this archive could be helpful. The website <www.moravianarchives.org> states that its researchers field a few complex genealogical inquiries per week, so sending them a detailed request shouldn’t be a problem, and the lack of a language barrier is always a relief.