German Research on the Internet

by Gary T. Horlacher, Baerbel K. Johnson

General Background

Internet is a great information tool. It can be used to:

Locate other researchers
Post queries
Search databases
Search directories
Identify information on archives and libraries
Search library catalogs
Participate in computer chat, tutorial, or lecture sessions
Get information on history, translations, terms, measurements, etc.

To locate something on the Internet you can:

Use Search Engines - If you have something specific you are searching for.
Use Categorized lists - If you have a specific topic you are interested in.

Going from one site to others that sound interesting and are referenced together is called “Surfing the Net”. Depending on your time constraints, this can be done at random or with a purpose. Following are wonderful sites to begin your search:

Search Engines - Different search engines search the Internet differently. You may wish to try several of them. They generally look for keywords. The sites below list over 1000 search engines and two popular search engines are also listed here:

General Categorized Lists - are catalogs of the Internet by topic. General genealogical lists that are excellent include:

General German Genealogical Sites

Those familiar with USGenWeb and Genuki research sites for US and England research will appreciate the Genealogy.Net site for German research. In particular the regional resources has wonderful information about each province of Germany!

German Emigration

Libraries, Museums, Archives, Societies

(see also Genealogy.Net, Cyndislist, and other general sites):

If church records have not been microfilmed, then one generally needs to write to the local parish for information from their church records in the village where the ancestors lived. Some parishes now have email and some even have Internet sites, which can be a faster way to get answers to queries than from traditional correspondence. An address for the local parish may be found in several ways:

By typing the name of the town in a search engine, one can often find a tourist site or local community site which will include information about the local church address, minister, service times, and perhaps even a link to a church site.
By using a telephone directory such as the telephone book for Germany found under TeleAusKunft on the “teldir” site mentioned below . Enter “Kirchen” (churches) in the name field, and the town name in the placee field. This will often give you a street address and phone number of a local parish.
By using sites like one of the following:

Databases

(Not Comprehensive List, but a place to start):
(See also German Emigration Section)

Note: Ancestry.com is a commercial service that is computerizing thousands of genealogical databases. Some of these are offered for free, others cost a fee. Although it has mostly US databases, it also has a number of good German databases including several emigration databases listed above, as well as New York City German Church Records and church records from Kapsweyer and Steinfeld. As they continue to add more databases, this may be a place to look for other sources. Also, although the FEEFHS site does not have a real fancy front, there are many databases from private people on their server if they can be located. “Familytreemaker” is also a commercial site. It offers a search of their several hundred CDs, but you will need to purchase them or access them through a library to find out the specific data. Their CDs #355 and 356 are indexes of Germans to American ports 1850-1888.

Regional

Here are two general sites and a few examples of regional sites. Try the general ones and others such as Cyndislist for other sites.

Germany is such a diverse country, with each kingdom, province, duchy, etc. having its own unique sources, indexes, databases, research strategies, guides, etc. It is not the purpose of this guide to list each of the provinces and their resources. Each province could have its own guide. Hopefully most of the guides, aids, and databases that people offer on the Internet for particular areas are also linked to sites such as the two given above. If not, it becomes nearly impossible to find some of the unlinked materials on the Internet. Although I did not intend to list individual regional sites other than refer to the above sites, I have included a few anyway. This is certainly not representative and you should still check the above sites first and primarily.

Lookups, Exchange, Helplist:

Those used to doing US research are familiar with the idea of look-ups, where volunteers are willing to provide a free research service in various areas and resources. As genealogy is so wide-spread in the US, Canada, and England this works pretty well and one can often find someone in remote areas to help with research. In Germany, genealogy is not as common a past-time and there are not as many people engaged in it. Unfortunately the few people willing to do free look-ups have been asked to help with areas they have not offered and been inundated with requests that do not fit the criteria they offered to do. They have often withdrawn their offers for help. Please be aware that there will not be nearly as many people available in Germany to do local look-ups and respect the people who are offering by not asking for things outside their own suggested areas of help.

Genealogy Exchange & Surname Registry

German Aids

Address, Telephone, Email Directories:

Calendars:

Calendar Zone - Many types of calendars

Embassies, Youth Hostels, Trains:

Language & Handwriting (see also Cyndislist-Germany):

(Try not to use computer translations for correspondence. Get the help of a “live” person instead.)

Maps and Gazetteers:

Time, Money, Measurement Conversions

Zip Codes:

Miscellaneous Other Items

German Ethnic Groups (not complete):

German Town Genealogy Bibliography:

Published Village Genealogies

History & Culture:

German-American Cultural Heritage

How-To Guides:

There are many how to guides for all sorts of topics in German research on the Internet. Two produced by the Family History Library are:

For gazetteers, maps, and other aids for Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, Stettin, Berlin, East & West Prussia, Württemberg, as well as a copy of this paper, see

ProGenealogists German Site

Names (see also Cyndislist and other general sites, not comprehensive):

Queries (see also Cyndislist & other general sites):

Other sites for genealogy can be found in genealogy periodicals and other sources. A fairly detailed listing is made every year in the November-December issue of Everton's Genealogical Helper. Journals published by various genealogical societies often include references to sites relating to their research interests.

Many people have also put their own genealogy files on the Internet to be downloaded. Unfortunately, individual family sites are not in the scope of this paper. If you put your genealogy on the Internet, please either include it with sites that are heavily used such as www.familysearch.org or www.ancestry.com, or make sure it gets linked to geographical sites such as Genealogy.Net and WorldGenWeb. Some examples of this are Andreas Hanacek's Genealogy Page with his Moravian, Palatinate, Schaffhausen (Switzerland), and Hessen names.