Genealogy Chat

Dear all, I hope you don't mind me writing down some tips, but I noticed that some of you are researching German ancestors and therefore hope that you find the following useful.

Location, location, location There is no central registry similar to the GRO in Germany. Germany wasn't one country until 1871 and so there wasn't much centralized registering. Registry things are still kept regional. If you don't have a location, it'll be extremely difficult to find out stuff, but there is some hope. First steps There are two main German genealogy websites: www(.)genealogienetz(.)de and www(.)ahnenforschung(.)net. They offer search facilities, links, forums, search ads etc. Unfortunately, they are all in German only. Some of the regional societies have translated part of their websites into English. You can try out the search function, however. It's here: http://fernabfrage(.)ahnenforschung.net/?sid= Just enter the last name ("Name") of the person you are looking for, if possible also the Christian name ("Vorname") and/or location ("Ort"). Keep in mind that some Germans who went to live in England might have anglicized (correct word?) their names. Charles would be Karl or Carl in Germany, for example. Under the search fields, there are several buttons. I'll explain the first three as they might be of most use and as familysearch is already widely known. - GEDBAS: the German gedcom exchange site. People enter their family trees and you can search which names they enter. Results will show you the name and probably birth and death dates and locations. If you think there could be a match, click on the name and you get some more info, like spouses or children. If you want to contact the person who entered that data, you need to register with Gedbas (it's free). Then you can contact that person and also enter your own data. - FOKO: researcher contacts. If you click on that button, another search site comes up which you have to fill in. Then you get a list with names and locations and have a possibility to contact the other researcher (again: after registering). - Vereinsdatenbanken: regional genealogical societies. Here, you can see which people research the same last names as you. After you click the button, a table opens up. The first column (Forscher = researcher) shows the person researching the name. The second column (Familienname = last name) shows the name(s) that person researches. The name you entered in the search field is highlighted in red. The third column (Forschungsgebiet/Region=location/region) shows the region. If you click on the name in the first column,a new page opens, showing you the contact data of the researcher (you don't need to register here!) and then you can contact that person and see if there is a match. Contacting people: Most Germans, especially those born after World War II, speak sufficient to fluent English or know someone who does, so you can contact them in English. How to get birth, death or other certificates: To get such dates or certificates, you'll need a location, as mentioned before. Certificates are kept in the registry offices. It's similar to the UK here, I think you can get any certificate of a person who died more than 100 years ago. For all others, you need to proof that you are a direct line descendant. So far, I don't know of any registry offices that have online search facilities, but that doesn't mean that there are some that have them. The German name for the registry office is "Standesamt", but you can also try and contact the city authorities and ask them for the best place, becauce sometimes the names are different. Usually a city's website is the city's name with the ending .de (www(.)hamburg(.)de or www.hagen(.)de, for example). In addition, there are church records. Churches keep books where they record all events like birth, baptism, marriage,death and burial, sometimes including valuable details like witnesses, godparents, cause of death, location of death etc. I found out a wealth of information about my ancestors when I visited the church and digged through the books. Some of these books go back to the 1500s. They also have books where all families of the parish were noted down. Very helpful as well. You can also write to them and they will usually give you the information, though it can take some time. Former German territories if you have ancestors coming from the former German territories like Eastern Prussia or Galicia, it's a bit more difficult. however, there are several English-language websites for exchanging information here (example: www(.)galiziengermandescendants.org) Many church records and registry entries were lost in the war and the years after that and sometimes it's just not possible to get information. However, some records were saved and are centrally located in large archives in Berlin or Leipzig, so that's worth trying out. Well, that's all I can think of right now. There is much more and maybe I can add to this when I remember more. I hope it's helpful for some of you. Feel free to contact me if you need any help, especially with language issues. I can't do much if you don't have a location, but otherwise, I'll be glad to help. Best regards, Heike

Hi Heike Thank you so very much for all your advice, it's fantastic! Heike, I wonder if you could point me inthe right direction, I'm trying to track down my Grandmothers family, her name was Ruth Bachmann b1930. I know she was from either Bad Sacha (not sure if the spelling is right - sorry) or Hildersheim (where my Mother was born - Veronika b1946). Unfortunately I don't know much about German geography but have a feeling it's Lower Saxony. Is there a specific place for this region to start looking at or would you recommend that I just follow the advice that you have already posted? Many thanks, Mandy

Hi Mandy, I took the liberty of running the name Ruth Bachmann through the search engines I mentioned in my posting. Nothing came up there, though. Sorry. However, there are a few avenues that might be worth exploring. The first one is the Genealogy society of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony). You are right, both Bad Sachsa and Hildesheim are in Niedersachen. This is the website of the genealogy society: www.familienkunde.de. Unfortunately, the English version is still under construction. Therefore, what I'd suggest is that you just contact them to see if and how they can help you. If you click on the button "Kontakt zu uns" (on the left), you'll get their mailing address, however, they advise you to rather use email contact (which will be quicker anyway). They don't give an email address but a form, which you get to when you click on the red word "E-mail" under the mailing address. Fill in your Christian name (Vorname), your last name (Name), your Email address, your Street (Strasse) and town (Ort), country (Land), Phone (Telefon) and Fax. I assume most of these are voluntary, so just try and leave those out that you don't want to share. In the large field called "Kommentar", you can write your questions to them, then click on the button under that field "Abschicken" to send the mail. More links and information to genealogy and history of Niedersachen are here (in English, though the links might lead you to German sites): www.genealogienetz(.)de/reg/NSAC/nsac.html. Interestingly enough, I couldn't find the contact information for the Standesamt (registry office) Bad Sachsa, but you can try the general contact info giving for the city authorities: Stadt Bad Sachsa, Bismarckstraße 1, 37441 Bad Sachsa Phone: +49-5523-3003-0, Fax: +49-5523-3003-49 Email: [email protected], [email protected] The website is www.badsachsa.de, the town info is under "Rathaus". The Hildesheim website is www.hildesheim.de, but currently it doesn't work, maybe it's just a server problem. The contact details for the Standesamt are as follows: Standesamt Hildesheim, Markt 1, 31134 Hildesheim Phone: +49-5121-301 224, Fax: +49-5121-301 869 Email: [email protected] The direct link (if it works again) is: www.hildesheim(.)de/hildesheim/buergerservice/ rathaus/standesamt-hildesheim.shtml Hope this helps a bit. Feel free to contact me with any further questions or if you need any help. Regards and good luck! Heike

Here is an American website with several links to help researching German ancestors (at the end of the list you can reach another list if you click on web sites): www.familytreemagazine(.)com/ethnic.asp?id=1017

Hi Heike Many, many thanks for the information that you have given me. Thanks for running the name through the sites, I tried and could find nothing either but it's good to know that wasn't just a language thing! I will try the tips that you have given me and let you know what I come up with. Thank you also for the offer of future help, I may well take you up on this! Regards Mandy

Thanks very much to Heike for all the help that has been given with my research in Germany. Trish

Hello Heike, Thank you so much for the information on reseaching our German ancestors. My g.grandfather was Frederick Hulbert b.1839 in Maturaliscoe, Dautschland. This info on his birth came from the 1871 census. Any help to discover more about him would be much appreciated. Kind regards Kim

Hi Heike i wonder if you can help me ? I am looking for a Frederick King and have come across this in the 1871 census for bath does this mean Frederick was born in a place called this and is it in Germany ? son Frederick 3yrs b Bath, Schwarzburg-sondershausen Dont worry if you cant help just thought you might have an idea. Thank you Lita

Dear all, I'll see what I can do with regard to your posts and will reply one by one, it's a pleasure, but might take some time. Please forgive me if I might take a while with replying to messages and forum posts, but I promise I'll look into each question and will reply. Best wishes, Heike

Zimmerling - to Carol Butler Hi Carol, I ran the name Zimmerling through the search engines. The only persons researching Zimmerlings (though that doesn't of course mean that they are the only Zimmerlings in Germany) are researching them in the Bremen area which is in the north of Germany. So maybe Swabia shouldn't be the only area to research. Many Zimmerlings are researched by a genealogy society (well, probably members of that society), called "Die Maus - Gesellschaft fuer Familienforschung im Bremen e.V." This is their website in English: www.genealogienetz(.)de/vereine/maus/index_e.htm I'd strongly recommend contacting them and see whether they might be able to give you more information about the Zimmerlings in the Bremen area. BTW, just some trivia that's not relevant for your research, but that I found interesting: when I put in the name "Robert Zimmerling" into google, it showed me that a former actor of the German version of Coronation Street is called Robert Zimmerling. Maybe he is a relation :-). I unfortunately can't help you with the Budapest connection, but I have a Hungarian friend, I'll ask him whether there is a central registry office or something. If you want to check out the Swabian venue, this would be the website informing you about sources and societies: www.genealogienetz.de/reg/BAD-WUE/BW.html. It's in English. Baden-Wuerttemberg is the German state in which Swabia lies. Schreerer does sound like a German name, but it's an unusual name. Are you sure that is the exact spelling? Nobody is researching the name, at least not in the databases I looked through. I tried to run it through the German online phone book (www.telefonbuch.de), but the site was down. Interestingly enough, when I ran it through google, it gave me a hungarian site where a Joszef Schreerer from Budapest is mentioned. It's in Hungarian and I don't know if you speak Hungarian (most people don't ;-), but I'll give you the link anyway: www.radio.hu/index(.)php?cikk_id=35035. The bit about Schreerer is the last one on that site, under the heading "Zsolnay manufaktúra". Do you want me to translate that bit to you? Might be a relation, because Schreerer is definitely NOT a Hungarian name. Were your ancestors Jewish by any chance? There are special websites and databeses for Jewish people researching their ancestors and they might have more information as well. That's all I could find on a quick search. Feel free to contact me with any further questions and/or translation needs. Regards, Heike

Frederick Hulbert - for Kim Hello Kim, I'm so sorry, but I couldn't find anything here. There is definitely no place in Germany called Maturaliscoe, I checked it out and it also doesn't sound German. I think this would be a transcription mistake or maybe the census guy wrote it down wrong because he wasn't familiar with the German name. The problem is, I can't think of any place that would even sound similar. I ran Hulbert through the search engines for genealogy research, but nobody was researching the name. Could it be possible that the name was Hubert? I ran "Friedrich Hubert" through the search engines (Friedrich being a possible German equivalent for Frederick, which is not a usual German name) and it came up with a Friedrich Hubert (there were two dots over the "u", the German Umlaut), born 1839. But he had a child born in Germany (Aschersleben) in 1874, so I guess that wasn't your ancestor. Sorry that I couldn't find more. Regards, Heike

Frederick King - for Lita Saunders Hello Lita, there is no place called Bath in Germany,but it's good that you have the region of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, because that can be of help. Schwarzburg-Sondershausen used to be an own country until 1920. Then it was dissolved and became part of Thueringen (Thuringia). So I'd recommend contacting the Thuringia genealogy people. There is a good mailing list about researching Thuringia ancestors, I'm a member myself. However, I think they only post in Germany. But if you want, I'll post a request for you if anyone knows the name. You can try and contact the genealogy societies. Now, they won't do any research for you and maybe they won't do anything unless you join them, but it can't hurt contacting them. One is the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für mitteldeutsche Familienforschung (AMF) - www.amf-verein(.)de (Website only in German) who can be contacted via Email: [email protected]. The other is the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Genealogie Thueringen e.V. - www.roland-pudenz(.)de/AGT.HTM (only in German), who can be contacted by email as well: [email protected] If you can find out the exact town, then you could be in luck because many churches in Thuringia still have the complete church books, going back hundreds or years and containing all relevant entries. I managed to find soooo much information there. What you should consider in your search is that Frederick King might not be the birth name of your ancestor, but the anglicized version. King is not a German name, it would rather be Koenig (usually written Konig, with two dots on the o), and Frederick could have been born a Friedrich. Feel free to contact me with any further questions. Regards, Heike