Archion contains records from Protestant churches all over Germany.
The importance of church records in German genealogy can never be overstated. And the microfilms of German church records in the collections of FamilySearch’s Family History Library system have long been one of the great assets for researchers outside of Germany. But despite the many villages included on these microfilms, many are not in that system for one reason or another.
For those with Protestant German ancestry, the church records megasite known as Archion <www.archion.de> (originally Kirchenbuchportal.de) has begun to fill that gap. Kirchenbuchportal GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, or “company with limited liability,” similar to a limited-liability company/LLC in the United States) was established in 2013 by a collection of Protestant churches (Evangelische Kirche). This entity, in turn, created the Archion website as the platform for the participating church bodies’ digitized records.
The Archion site (image A.) already has passed the five-million-page mark. While not all of the Protestant union’s member churches are participating, an estimated 25 percent of church books from involved branches have been scanned. Those member churches pay for the ongoing digitization of their own records, and subscription payments by individual users pay the overall costs for the website.
Archion contains records from Protestant churches all over Germany.
Archion has many valuable church records that can provide information you can’t get anywhere else. Some of these are free upon registering for an account on the site, but many require a membership fee.
But before discussing what records are available, we should first identify which churches have contributed their holdings to the site. The full German names and coverage areas of the participating state church archives with registers already on Archion are listed here:
Several partner churches that are involved in Archion have not yet posted digitized registers on the site. These include Anhalt, Nordkirche (Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania), Lippe (Lippe), and Braunschweig (Brunswick).
Appendix A contains a map showing the Protestant state churches participating in Archion. The Protestant churches that are not involved with Archion are mentioned in chapter 12.
Note that the boundaries of the Evangelisch state churches do not follow the current Land boundaries; in some cases, they are leftover boundaries from the states of the old Second Reich.
You can investigate general information and search whether a particular church book has been digitized for free on Archion. In some cases, only a portion of the records of a particular parish or church district have been digitized and uploaded so far. Those in digital form are shown with a green background while those with a white background still exist only as originals or as microfilms. You can also look at the Forum for inquiries free of charge, but making a post on it requires that you create an account.
To look at the digital copies of the church registers or to download copies of pages from those registers, you’ll need to purchase a “passport” that allows you to access a particular time period and a limited number of downloads. The site offers plans for “individuals” and “professionals,” the latter being significantly more expensive but allowing for larger (but still limited) numbers of downloads as well as commercial use (image B.). As of publication, Archion has three plans for “private” individuals, each with different time lengths and number of downloads allowed: thirty-days’ access (fifty document downloads), twelve-months’ access (six hundred downloads), and twenty-days’ access measured by time logged in (fifty document downloads). Plans for “professionals” run at two to three times the price of the private plans but offer two to three times the number of downloads. The plan that allows for twenty days (that is, twenty-four hours of time spent logged in) is likely the best value for most researchers.
Archion offers a variety of paid subscription plans for both private individuals and professionals. You’ll need a subscription to access many of the site’s features.
You should carefully choose your package since, for example, the lowest-level monthly passport will expire exactly thirty days after you book it. It also seems strange to American eyes that the site has no plan that allows for unlimited downloads, but Germans in general are a people more used to limits and less into the “all you can eat” concept. Taking screenshots of the pages is also not explicitly disallowed under Kirchenbuchportal’s terms and conditions.
To purchase an Archion subscription, log in to Archion and click your username, then click Buchungen. Under Gebuchtes Paket, click Jetzt informieren. If you would like a one-month subscription, click Buchen under 1 Monat Privater Nutzer, and if you would like a one-year subscription, click Buchen under 1 Jahr Privater Nutzer. On the next page, fill in any information that is not already prefilled on the next page: Adresse (street address), PLZ (ZIP code), and Stadt (town and state, such as Los Angeles, CA). Click Weiter and choose whether to pay with PayPal or credit card. Follow the payment instructions. For the credit card option, you should check both check boxes on the next page, then click Kostenpflichtig bestellen. Then click Klicken Sie hier, um Ihre Bestellung sicher über PAYONE bezahlen. Fill out the standard credit card form. Once you’ve submitted your subscription information, you’ll receive a confirmation e-mail that tells you when the subscription is active.
Some church records now digitized by Archion are available for free either in microfilm or online through FamilySearch.org. Since Archion is a paid subscription site, try the free FamilySearch.org first.
You can look at what church books are available (and call up digitized pages if you paid for a subscription) from either Suche (Search) or Browse. Suche allows you to enter a village name directly while Browse starts on the archive level, then drills down to the church districts, parishes, and finally individual volumes of the church books. In neither case are names in the registers searchable. In cases where the registers on Archion are also found on microfilms in the FamilySearch system, you’ll need to make note of two things about the site. First, new technology has made many of the scans on Archion crisper than those on the microfilms. And second, Archion lists the holdings of a particular parish by what’s in each Band (volume) whereas FamilySearch cataloging, especially on older microfilms, usually lumps together volumes and may obscure chronological gaps in the records. Here’s a step-by-step guide for getting to the church registers each way.
Archion is definitely a moving target. Digitization of the church registers is continuously happening, and the site expects to expand its digitization efforts in the English version. The pace of digitization varies from state church to state church, and Kirchenbuchportal is not committing to a specific completion date for the remaining 75 percent of church registers. The entity hopes that additional Protestant state churches will join the Archion effort and is open to working with the Roman Catholic churches in Germany, too. While waiting for the cooperative digitization effort, some of the individual archives may have individual projects not yet preserved on Archion. To learn more about these, check out a list of church archives and their Web contact information at <www.archion.de/de/kontakt>.