Family historians with interest in German research and Germanic ancestors will find numerous guides, maps, emigration records and compiled genealogies for the nobility and middle class including Deutsches Geschlecterbuch, many Ortsippenbuch (local records) volumes, and Siebmacher’s Grossem Allgemeinem Wappenbuch (local records) in the print collection. Consult the Genealogy Center’s online “German and Germanic” subject snapshot for additional collection details.

When it comes to family history and consumer genomics, Ancestry® leads in resources and innovation. For more than 30 years, we’ve been using cutting-edge technologies to enable discoveries that enrich lives. Through ongoing innovation in DNA science, digitizing historical records and automating research, we help customers create a more complete family portrait that continually yields new discoveries as science and technology advances.

At the present time, more than 120,000 church records from 25 archives are available for inspection on Archion. The company adds more archive material from the partner archives every day. All new additions are updated daily on the homepage. When placing the digitized archive material online, Archion adheres to the specifications of the respective partner archive.

During the German period (1870-1918), the Departmental Archives of the annexed territories (Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle) experienced a specific operation and development compared to the French departments. The application of German archival directives, instead of French directives, influences the content but also the classification framework of documents. The Departmental Archives of Bas-Rhin, like those of Haut-Rhin and Moselle, are therefore not affected by various measures prescribed in France, such as the classification of papers from the revolutionary period (circular of 1874) or legal deposit. newspapers (circular of 1887). On the other hand, these services benefit from measures taken by the German authorities and which France adopted only later, such as the payment of the old minutes of notaries, decided in 1873, the transfer of judicial records, decided in 1887, the nationalization of the archivist function, established in 1889, or the principle of continuous listing.

The Marburg Archive School is the central training and further education facility for archives in the Federal Republic of Germany. For more than 50 years archivists of the higher as well as the upper archival service have been trained here. Since the early 1990s, we have also been offering advanced training courses and regularly holding colloquia and smaller specialist conferences. The archive school Marburg is a state enterprise of the state of Hesse according to § 26 of the Hessian financial regulation. Apart from basic funding by the State of Hesse, the Marburg Archive School charges fees that cover costs for the services in the training of archivists. The courses in the advanced training program are offered at overall cost-covering prices. This also applies to all current and future training courses that have to be offered at a cost-covering level in accordance with Section 16, Paragraph 3 of the Hessian Higher Education Act.

Archivportal-D is part of the German Digital Library and offers you a comprehensive search for archives and archive material in Germany. You will find a comprehensive directory of the German archive institutions of various sponsorships, Indexing information on the archives of our data partner archives, Digital copies of archives from individual data partner archives, and We provide a platform through which all archives in Germany can make their contact details, indexing information and digital copies accessible.

Our goal is to preserve precious records found in cemeteries throughout the world. We use modern technology to capture images of headstones with their GPS locations so users worldwide can access those records anywhere. BillionGraves strives to do just that: preserve at least one billion graves. And we won't stop there!

Castlegarden.org is a free database developed and funded by The Battery Conservancy. It contains and makes available eleven million records of immigrants who arrived at the Port of New York from 1820 - 1892. Today more than 100 million Americans can trace their ancestry to this early period of immigration.

Find out about your ancestors and the places in which they lived in our wide range of offers. Inform yourself in our print magazines COMPUTER GENEALOGY and FAMILY RESEARCH, in our blog , the Digital Library (DigiBib) or the online encyclopedia GenWiki. You can also get a vivid impression of our diverse activities on our YouTube channels . Communicate with other researchers via our central communication platform discourse , our forum , social media or when attending lectures or other events.

The International Confederation of Genealogy and Heraldry was founded in Brussels (Belgium) on November 13, 1971 with a view to creating and maintaining lasting ties of collaboration between associations and federations whose purpose is the study of genealogy and of heraldry, to defend the interests of the genealogical and heraldic world with the national organizations and to support the associations and national federations in their relations with the official organizations of their respective countries. Its purpose is to promote the organization of international congresses of genealogical and heraldic sciences and the realization of the motions which are voted there.

Cyndi's List has been a trusted genealogy research site for more than 25 years. Cyndi's List is free for everyone to use and it is meant to be your starting point when researching online.

Germany's Telephone Book

In our office we have extensive research resources such as copies of all Bremen church registers up to 1811, copies of several church sub-books from the region, the civil status registers for the city of Bremen and the Bremen rural communities from 1811 to 1875, in which all births, marriages and deaths are recorded. In addition, various family history sources, also from other regions, an extensive genealogical library and research work on individual families are available. Registry office documents that are no longer subject to data protection can be viewed electronically with us - only by members.

IGGP will try out many ways to bring people together, to walk new ways to be successful in German genealogy worldwide. What will be important for our success is quality in what we do, what we find, what we document and proof and how we publish. That all needs a co-operative working and sharing by understanding that here very different mentalities come together.

Many old professions do not exist in the present day. These are also not in modern day dictionaries. We published a list with the most common old professions. You may ask us for others, if you do not find the profession you are looking for.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides FamilySearch free of charge to everyone, regardless of tradition, culture, or religious affiliation. FamilySearch resources help millions of people around the world discover their heritage and connect with family members.

From the FamilySearch Wiki - this link contains many guides and useful information to assist researching in learning to read and write in the old German script.

This class is designed to give family history researchers who read little or no German a basic working knowledge of old German script. Language: English

FEEFHS was organized in 1992 as The Federation of East European Family History Societies, an international organization to promote genealogical research in Eastern and Central Europe without any ethnic, religious, or social distinctions.

A portion of the Foundation for Eastern European Family History Studies website. This section has many historic maps from Eastern Europe that are very useful when researching in those areas.

Find a Grave is the best place on the internet to look for burial and other final disposition information for your family, friends and famous people. The site provides tools that let people from all over the world work together, share information and build an online, virtual cemetery experience.

Findmypast connects people to their family stories We are a fast-growing, technology-driven subscription service. With a bank of billions of digitized records, and access to some of the world’s most renowned historical databases, Findmypast allows customers to connect to people, both past and present, and visualize their family story in more detail than ever before. 

Josef Mitterhuber probably had no idea that the specialist cartographic publisher would become an internationally successful group of companies when he founded the city publisher in Stuttgart Bad Cannstatt in 1951. The beginnings in a residential area on Daimlerstrasse were initially modest.

GEDmatch is a free DNA comparison and analysis website for people who have tested their autosomal DNA using a direct-to-consumer genetic testing company, such as 23andMe, or have a custom file from other sources. Testers download their DNA data file from the testing company, and then upload it to GEDmatch. GEDmatch processes the file, adds it to a genealogical database, and provides applications for matching and further analysis. Because GEDmatch aggregates files from all testing companies, your potential for matches is greater.

You will find here databases made by and for genealogists. After registration you may use these databases free of charge.The collection currently contains more than 21 million entries and will be continually updated.

Geogen stands for "geographical genealogy", which means something like location-based genealogy. On this page you can create maps of the distribution of family names in Germany. Particularly noticeable concentrations can indicate the place of origin of the name or family.

These websites are technically and partly also in terms of content out of date; they are no longer actively maintained. Its content has largely been transferred to the current GenWiki website , but this migration has not yet been completed.

Reading old German records requires a knowledge of basic German genealogical terms and familiarity with German handwriting. Difficulty in reading a record may not result from a record keeper’s poor penmanship but rather the use of a different style of handwriting. As most early German documents were written in some form of Gothic handwriting or printing, familiarity with this style of writing will aid in deciphering early German records. This guide introduces common Gothic letters, type, and handwriting used in German records.

To be an international leader in welcoming people of all backgrounds to experience their shared humanity through celebration of the culture, innovation and values of the modern German-speaking world.

Resources for German Genealogy on the Internet - Research Information for Americans of German Descent

German dictionary by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm.

Lists of passengers on of vessels sailing from Hamburg between 1850 and 1934 survive in the Hamburg State Archive, holdings of the emigration office. The Family History Library in Salt Lake City has microfilm copies of these manifests, comprising 486 reels, which can be consulted either at the Family History Library itself or at any LDS (Mormon) Family History Center outside Germany (restrictions imposed by the Staatsarchiv Hamburg forbid lending these microfilms to any Family History Center within Germany).

To access HeritageQuest Online, please enter your username and password.

Among the billions of historical records housed at the National Archives throughout the country, researchers can find information relating to immigrants from the late 1700s through the early 2000s. The National Archives preserves and makes available documents created by Federal agencies in the course of their daily business. As you plan your research, consider this question: how does my research topic intersect with the US Federal Government?

With a global digital platform, Kapitol-Infobel publishes and continually updates a database of some 300 million telephone subscribers and 270 million businesses worldwide.

Our resources and fields of work cover the European, especially the German-speaking area. We are interested in the period from the late Middle Ages to the present. The perception of personal résumés and the development of groups have been shaped over the centuries by continuities and breaks that we would like to highlight.

This InfoFile lists nearly 1,500 occupations and occupational terms in German, with English translations. Also included are common occupational prefixes and suffixes in German. This list was prepared in conjunction with the occupational terms found in the lists of Drohobycz and Boryslaw forced laborers, and Mathausen prisoners.

Welcome to the most comprehensive database of its kind in the world. It contains 108761 locations with over 45,115 name changes once, and 5,500 twice and more. All locations are EAST of the Oder and Neisse rivers and are based on the borders of the eastern provinces in Spring 1918. Included in this database are the following provinces: Eastprussia, including Memel, Westprussia, Brandenburg, Posen, Pomerania, and Silesia. It currently list most towns or points, points being: Mills, some bridges, battlefields, named trees, cenotaphs etc. As more information becomes available, (books, maps, your input etc) this database will be updated.

Are you looking for your ancestors who emigrated from the former states of Baden, Württemberg or Hohenzollern in the past centuries? Would you like to look at sources on emigration, read travel reports and letters from emigrants , get to know important emigrants in order to better understand the diverse relationships between Baden, Württemberg and Hohenzollern abroad?

This is the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg located in Stuttgart, Germany. If you want to research your family's history, you can track down person by person and create a pedigree chart. In doing so, you go back to the past from the present. Skipping generations or even centuries can lead to incorrect results.

Suetterlin script: a script, created by the Berlin graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin (1865-1917), which was taught from 1915 to 1941 in German schools. It is also called the "the German handwriting". The writing is a standard form of the earlier and very different chancery writing which was mainly used by government officials.

I am Teresa Steinkamp McMillin, Certified Genealogist®, author of the Guide to Hanover Military Records, 1514-1866 on Microfilm at the Family History Library, and owner of Lind Street Research, a company dedicated to helping people discover their German ancestry.

English-German Dictionary. Search 1,000,000,000 translations. Also available as an app.

The MMHS was established in 1958. Since its founding the MMHS has pursued its objective of fostering an awareness of Mennonite history and culture in many ways. The seed for these activities was planted in the two decades preceding 1958. During WWII several groups such as the Mennonite Agricultural Advisory Committee of the West Reserve and individual scholars such as P.J. Schaefer became involved in the preparation of books to promote self understanding among Manitoba Mennonites.

Map of Germany from 1789 by Thomas Höckmann

Catholic Church records of Austria, Germany, Lux. Slovenia and others.

Our Library and Archives house one of the largest collections of German-language materials published in North America, as well as primary source documents, such as letters, diaries, and business records; and the North American German Dialect Archive, which contains thousands of hours of recordings of immigrant dialects from the mid-1940s to the present..

The valuable German Gazetteer, Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-lexikon des deutschen Reichs, brought into a website linked to maps, parish locations and other researchers. Each entry is transcribed and then translated into English.

Odessa is a digital library dedicated to the cultural and family history of the millions of Germans who emigrated to Russia in the 1800s and their descendants, who are now scattered throughout the world. The Odessa document collection consists primarily of digitized books and records plus indexes of microfilms and research aids that enable users to trace individual and family migrations since the early 1800s. Odessa is made freely available by the author, Roger Ehrich, on whose cloud server the library resides.

This site contains tools for finding immigration records, census records, vital records, and for dealing with calendars, maps, foreign alphabets, and numerous other applications. Some of these tools fetch data from other websites but do so in more versatile ways than the search tools provided on those websites.

Historical European maps at the University of Texas

Records about German families were created at the local level, in the town or parish where they lived. Therefore, locating places in Germany is an important aspect of successful German research. From there it is essential to identify the parish where the family attended church. The primary tools for such research are gazetteers. Most of those gazetteers are written in German (often using an archaic font style), and are hard for most researchers to access, except via microfilm at a Family History Center. Fortunately, technology is changing all that. Slowly, an increasing number of gazetteers for various German states are appearing online.

The atlas helps in tracing the roots of families with origins in any part of the German empire from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Due to the large scale of its maps (1:850,000) and its thorough gazetteer of place-names, one can locate even small towns and villages on the maps in the Ravenstein atlas. A special feature is the marking of the locations of churches on all of the maps as well as one special map with an accompanying table giving statistics on the religious denominations found throughout the German empire down to the Regierungsbezirk and Kreis governmental units. An explanatory key of the symbols appearing on the map can be found in the lower right corner of map section IX.

Founded in 1995 by John P. Fuller Continued by Linda Lambert and Megan Zurawicz

OLD GERMAN PROFESSIONS, OCCUPATIONS and ILLNESSES Translated from German into the English language by Oliver Weiss

The Foundation works to preserve and honor two of our country’s greatest landmarks: the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We pursue a diverse range of educational and community building efforts and work to create meaningful connections between island visitors and the dense fabric of American history.

Genealogists researching the multi-ethnic heritage of the Burgenland of Austria and adjoining areas of former West Hungary.

This presentation provides information about immigration from the German-speaking world to the United States, and about the activities of German immigrants in the United States from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

"The Luxembourgers in America" is part of the pilot phase of a larger project to create, in cooperation with partners in Europe and the United States, a Transatlantic Digital Library dealing with themes of common European-American interest and significance.

The largest free-standing public genealogy library in the US has 52,000 square feet of resources for family history researchers. The German Research Discussion Group presents and preserves genealogical information about the German regions, traces German ancestors, and fosters a better understanding of the lives they led. This group will allow the exchange of information and help keep members abreast of issues and updates.

Welcome to the Saarland Family page at Surname Finder, a service of Genealogy Today. Our editors have compiled this checklist of genealogical resources, combining links to commercial databases along with user-contributed information and web sites for the Saarland surname. As additional sources for vital records, original documents, vintage photographs and surname-based DNA projects are discovered, this page is updated to offer the best list for researching Saarland ancestry.

The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. is a humanitarian organization. On behalf of the Federal Government, it is dedicated to the task of collecting, preserving and caring for the graves of German war dead abroad. The association looks after relatives in matters of war grave care, it advises public and private bodies, it supports international cooperation in the field of war grave care and promotes education and encounters among young people at the resting places of the dead.

There are 200 pages are in this category and 48 subcategories.

GenWiki is a project of the Association for Computer Genealogy . This is where genealogists provide information about genealogy. Enrich the project with your knowledge. Our interactive help and the GenWiki-L discussion area make it easier for you to get started.