Friday, January 22, 2010

What's New in German Research on the Internet by Baerbel K. Johnson, A.G.


I am sitting squished between two wonderful people who are bearing with me as I type. My friend Vern Mathern is here and we are happy to hear more about German genealogy. It is standing room only here!

Baerbel thinks the Internet is like eating an elephant. You can only bite off small pieces at a time.

Her ancestry is German yet she comes from four different countries, including the Czech Republic. While she reads German, Czech is another matter. Her personal miracle came after thirty-four years of research, she found her grandfather's birth record in Czech at. http.//www.actapublica.cz. And, interestingly enough, the baptismal records include the marriage documentation with it.

New records are coming online every day and the Internet is a treasure trove! Topical link lists are found on wiki.familysearch.org and go to "Germany-digital resources." German town genealogies and parish register inventories are available.

Other sites include:


  • http://www.matricula.findbuch.net/ (beta version site) has 180 parishes with 2767 volumes from Austria and Germany

  • http://www.kirchenbuch-virtuel.de/ Northeastern Bavaria was the first to put info online and in order to provide it, they created a genealogical society. You need to join the society, pay the membership fee and a user fee to access. A bit cumbersome but worth the hassle if your family is from this area. Cost is 35 euro per year, 10 euros per month per parish.

  • Jewish registers for Baden Wuerttenberg, Hohenzollern are at www.2.landesarchive-bw.de/of21/olf/startbild.php?bestand=5632 (I will verify web site and edit if I missed a letter)

Town genealogies, societies,family genealogies and indexes include:


Printed sources --indexes and images


Baerbel says there is software in development which will translate the old Gothic handwriting into modern language for us. Incredible! Just with what I heard in the last hour will keep me busy for months, maybe years!

3 comments:

Antra said...

Another source for the list:

For those researching Baltic German ancestry, who had Baltic German ancestors livin in what is now Latvia, you can view Latvian church books here:

http://www.lvva-raduraksti.lv

German and Latvian congregations are often listed separately. a "v" or "vācu/vāciešu" next to a record indicates that it is about the German congregants. The language of the records is either German or Russian.

-Antra.

Energetic Storyteller, Family Historian & Grebel Lover said...

Thanks for the information, Antra.

Bernie Hornung said...

I also discovered the Raduraksti records for both of my sides of the family who are Baltic Germans. I find the indexing here very good to navigate, as I can read German (Russian - not).

For Estonian records I go to http://www.ra.ee/vau/index
The are a little harder to get around as only the first pages of directory are in English. Then you have to know your Estonian names for parishes. I use two Wikipedia pages to give me the German to Latvian or Estonian place names.

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