German State Archives

If you live in the UK, then you’ll understand how useful it is to have the National Archives, a single institution that has so much useful genealogical and historical information.  We’re spoilt in that regard, and whilst a similar institution does exist in Germany, generally speaking all the important records are held at either a State Archive level or sometimes still at a town/village level in which case they’re stored at the Rat Haus (Town Hall).  You’ll need to visit these archives in person to be able to get the information that you need on your ancestors.  If visiting a Rat Haus, then you’ll also need to make an appointment in advance, you can’t really just turn up, which you can with a state archive.  I’ve also made links to the state archives in the table above, so hopefully that will be useful as a starting point for you.  

German Emigration

The petty squabbles I mentioned previously that happened between kingdoms, principalities, and Duchy’s pre-1871, was a major cause of emigration to predominantly the United States, and some other European countries during this time.  The main ports that people would have left from would be Hamburg, or Bremen in Germany.  So, it’s worth checking for emigration records from these ports.

German Census records

If you’ve ever tried to look for German census records online, then I bet you won’t have found them, and unfortunately, it’s not always a matter that they have not yet been indexed.  There are some census records, but they generally occurred for very specific reasons, and they certainly are not taken as regularly, say every 10 years, as they are in both the UK and the US.  Any census records as we might think of them, are stored at a federal state level, and some of the more important censuses are:

• 1834-1867: Various years and were taken in conjunction for the Zollverein (Custom’s union) which was created as an early predecessor to the German confederation.
• 1871 to 1910: The census resumed in the newly united German Reich (German Realm), and they continued every 5 years between these dates.
• 5 December 1916 and 1917: this census was created to know where to distribute food during WW1.
• 1933 and 1939: You need to be careful with the information contained in these 2 censuses as they were affected by the bias of the Nazi government in power at the time; so any Polish, Jewish, or gypsies that are part of your family tree will probably have, understandably, lied on the census form to simply protect their lives.  Remember during this time there would have been attacks on Polish and Jewish shops, and repression of other minorities by the Nazi government which would have formed the backdrop to these census records.
• 1945/1946: The Allied nations held a census post-WW2
• 1980: Attempts at introducing a census on West Germany sparked strong popular resentment since some citizens felt that the questions asked were quite personal (remember the privacy attitudes I mentioned previously). 

German Churches

There are 2 main churches in Germany, the main church is the Evangelisch Kirche (Evangelical Church), which covers protestants, Lutherans etc.  The 2nd church is the Katholische Kirche (Catholic Church) and it’s strongest in the south-west of Germany.  An interesting note is that if your ancestors are from a small village then typically there will only be one church, and it’s often shared between the different church denominations!  It would not be unusual to say have a catholic wedding in the church in the morning, followed by an evangelical wedding in the afternoon!  Just the names of the vicar, pastor, priest will change, and helpfully all births, marriages, and deaths will be stored in the same church book.  This scenario won’t generally apply to towns or cities where it’s more usual to have separate churches.

Church Books & Church records

In the UK and US then church books are highly structured, and they record the usual births, baptisms, marriages, and deaths with generally standardised information across them all.  In Germany then the church has had more flexibility in what they record, and it’s also stored in a less structured way.  There can be notes in the church book margin containing pertinent pieces of information relating to an individual, or a family.  Further each church often also had something called a Familien Buch, which simply doesn’t exist in the UK, or US.  A Familien Buch which you’ll be able to find on archion.de, will be in effect a mini family tree, births, marriages, and death dates, and any other information about them. It will usually note if anyone has emigrated, and often include the country that they went to.  Helpfully they also list all family members in the same house.  So, if you come across a church Familien Buch on archion.de, it can be incredibly useful to have a look through these books for your ancestors.  The familienbuch in some ways makes up for the lack of census information. 

Over 125,000 church records are available on https://archion.de, and be aware that they’re not indexed nor are they searchable.  The collection however is growing very quickly indeed, as more church books are being scanned in on a daily basis.  For each parish then there will typically be a birth, baptisms, marriage, death, and usually a familienbuch too.  So, you’ll need to use the table above to try to find out where the parish now resides. They do have an English section in their forum, which can be quite useful.  A church book (Kirche Buch) is often abbreviated in online forums to be KiBu, so if you see this abbreviation online, then you now know what it means.  

Also, it would be good to brush up on your alt Deutsch or Kurrent Schrift, as all the books will be written in that style, and you will not be able to find many church books after 1871 for reasons explained previously.

Old German writing ‘Kurrent Schrift’, and modern phonetic spellings

If you were to look at historical UK or US genealogical documents, then it’s quite easy to read and they may use what’s called copperplate/roundhand scripts.  Most German historical church and civil records are written in a script sometimes called Altdeutsch (old German) or Kurrent Schrift, which will certainly take some time to get used to reading, here’s what I mean: