Check out Robert Shea’s GERMAN FIRST and LAST NAMES website for information on German names. Especially interesting to me is his listing of popular German given names from about 1910 (extracted from: Vornamen-Verzeichnis, Ferdinand Khull, Berlin 1910, Verlag des Allgemeinen Deutschen Sprachvereins (F. Berggold)).
As we’ve worked over the last three years on the Map Guide to German Parish Registers series, I have come to realize that the religious beliefs of the folks varied from area to area. Some areas would be principally Catholic, while in other areas all the folks were Lutheran. Some areas might have many Lutheran as well as Evangelical churches, and very few Catholic. Many districts might have 20 churches of one religion, while only one (1) of another.
At the Maps, Etc. site (hosted by the University of South Florida), you will find an excellent map, visually representing how the religions were spread out around Germany in 1610.
Following is a description of that map:
Description: Map showing religious divisions of Germany, circa 1610. Map is color-coded to show boundaries.
Place Names: Berlin, Bremen, Cologne, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hannover, Mannheim, Nuremberg, Wiesbaden
ISO Topic Categories: oceans, location, inlandWaters, boundaries
Keywords: Religious Divisions of Germany c. 1610, political, religious, local jurisdictions, country borders, major political subdivisions, oceans, location, inlandWaters, boundaries, Unknown, 1610
Source: Ward, Prothero, and Leathes, The Cambridge Modern History Atlas (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1912)
Map Credit: Courtesy The Private Collection of Roy Winkelman
The Immigrant Genealogical Society Library in Burbank, California, has volumes 1 through 125 of the Deutschen Familienarchiv, published by a German genealogical society. Posted on the IGS website are two indexes to this series of volumes. Over 839 surnames are listed in the first index about which they have published material, covering volumes 1 through 100. A second index covers an additional 64 surnames (plus their variations) found in volumes 101 through 125, which were published from 1988 to 1999.
These genealogical and biographical materials range from one paragraph to three volumes of genealogy on one family.
For each item, there is a brief “Contents Outline.” IGS volunteers can copy the Contents Outline for a surname, and provide an English translation so the genealogist can ascertain whether the published genealogy is related to the surname they are researching.
In addition, there is also an every-surname index for each volume. If the researcher submits the surname of a spouse who married into the surname requested, IGS volunteers can check the every-surname index to see whether that spouse’s surname is mentioned within the same set of pages as the requested surname.
According to their website, IGS will respond with how many pages of material there is to copy for the requested surname, and whether or not the spouse’s surname coincides for a fee of $5.00. The researcher may then order copies of the materials if you wish for $.15 per page, plus postage and packaging.
The society’s address is: Immigrant Genealogical Society, P. O. Box 7369, Burbank, CA 91510-7369.
Do you have a specific area of interest in Germany? If so, then take a look at the variety of Germanic mailing lists you can choose from. As of today, I count 181 mailing lists found at the Genealogy Resources on the Internet - Germany/Prussia Mailing List site.
Look up your area of interest and sign up now. And you don’t have to actively participate if you don’t care to. Much can be learned just by reading other’s posts.
At the Maps, etc. website, you find an excellent 1872 German Map. Not detailed, mind you, but not just an outline map either, and with suffficent detail to make out the German States, major cities, rivers and so forth. Click on the above link to view the map.
Following is the description from the website:
Description: Physical map of Germany.
Place Names: Dresden, Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Mannheim, Hannover, Berlin,
ISO Topic Categories: boundaries, location, inlandWaters
Keywords: Germany, physical, political, physical features, county borders, boundaries, location, inlandWaters, Unknown, 1872
Source: James Monteith, Comprehensive Geography (New York, New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1872) 68
Map Credit: Courtesy The Private Collection of Roy Winkelman
One of the very best online gazetteers for the entire country of Germany is the DMOZ Open Directory Project Gazetteer.
Thousands of place names are found - all in alphabetical order. You will find that the Germanic states are listed using German spellings (example: Bavaria = Bayern), however, no umlauts are to be found. Instead, an e is thrown in behind the character that would typically be accented (Example: Württemberg is spelled Wuerttemberg).
I always enjoy good maps, and the 1848 Prussian Province of Posen map at michaelelectric.com is one to be appreciated. Very detailed, and digitized in high-resolution, the map sets the standard for online map quality.
The Meyer Orts Gazetteer is a primary tool for finding places in eighteenth and nineteenth century Germany. I’ve had my own set of Meyer Orts for some time, but for those of you who may not have the three-volume series of books, you can access them at Ancestry.com - in the 1912 edition, of course. And of course, you must have an Ancestry subscription to access it.
The Meyers Orts volumes are not easy to read, as Gothic German never is. But it’s worth the time that it takes to learn to read the stuff.
The following is from the Meyers Orts page at Ancestry:
Source Information:
Ancestry.com. Meyers Gazetteer of the German Empire [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006. Original data: Erich Uetrecht. Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs. 5th Edition. Leipzig, Germany: Bibliographisches Institut, 1912-1913.About Meyers Gazetteer of the German Empire
This database contains Meyers Geographical and Commercial Gazetteer of the German Empire (or Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs in German). This gazetteer of the German Empire is the gazetteer to use to locate place names in German research. It was originally compiled in 1912. This gazetteer is the gazetteer to use because it includes all areas that were part of the pre-World War I (WWI) German Empire. Gazetteers published after WWI may not include parts of the Empire that were lost to bordering countries. Overall, this gazetteer includes more than 210,000 cities, towns, hamlets, villages, etc.Why use Gazetteers?
Gazetteers are very important to use when doing family history research. They not only help you pinpoint a specific place and associate them with the jurisdictions to which they belong, but they can also provide interesting facts about the community and help you to know where to look for additional records. For example, from Meyers Orts you may learn about the size of the town, if there was a post office, where the nearest train station was located, and wehre the civil registration office was located.How to Use Meyers Orts:
Place names are listed alphabetically and are arranged in the following manner:
Volume I: A-K
Volume II: L-Z
Volume III: Supplement (contains additions and corrections)
Each entry contains a paragraph of information. If all of the information is available it will include the following things and appear in the following order:
- Name of place
- Place type
- Name of state to which it belongs
- Government district
- Population
- Post Office and other Communications information
- Railroad information
- Courts
- Consulate
- Embassy
- Churches
- Schools
- Institutes
- Military
- Financial
- Business Institutions
- Trades and Industries
- Shipping Traffic
- Local government services
- Dependent Places
The paragraphs of information are full of abbreviations, which were used to save space. At the beginning of Volume I is an abbreviation list. This list will help you immensely in reading the entry.
Another difficult thing about using Meyers Orts is correctly deciphering the Gothic script that the work was printed in.
Some of the above information was taken from Uncapher, Wendy K. How to Read & Understand Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs. Janesville, WI, USA: Origins, 2003.
Note that Genealogical Publishing Company produced a reprint of the 1912 Meyers Orts in 2000, with a Researcher’s Guide and translations of the Introduction, as well as an Introduction for the use of the Gazetteer and Abbreviations. As of this date, the set is still in print, and sells for $300.00.
There a numerous ways to get English translations of German text found on the various web pages you may run across in your research. However, one of the easiest is to let Google translate the entire page.
Note that on the second line from the very top of the page, it says “View Original Web Page.” Click on this link, and you’re looking at the original German language page. I use Safari and Mozilla web browsers with tabs “turned on.” I can click on the tabs for the English translation or German original pages, and compare text.
Keep in mind that comparisons are a must, as many words get guffed up in translation, since the translator can’t determine whether a word is a proper noun, or something else. A good example is the name of the town of Kriegsfeld in the Pfalz. There is a German language Wikipedia page for Kriegsfeld. If you translate the page into English, you’ll find that the name of the town gets changed to War Field! Hmmm. We wanted a translation, but didn’t mean to change the name of the town.
Enjoy!
If you’re just getting started with your research in the Rhineland and Pfalz, be sure and use the resources found on the Rheinland-Pfalz pages at Genealogie.net. These resources are specific to this area of Germany - and many of them are written in English - including the home page for this section.
Resources found there include:
