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The ABCs of German Genealogy Resources, A-M

A: Archion

Archion.de is a subscription-based site, but worth the money! This Protestant church book portal has been an amazing resource for my clients. There are currently 140,000 digitized church books online and they are working on uploading more each and every day. 

B: Bremen Emigration and Immigration

Millions of emigrants left Germany, Austria, Hungary, and other European countries from the port of Bremen. In this FamilySearch article, learn about the history of the port, the destruction of almost all passenger records from there, and links to helpful resources related to passenger lists. 

C: CompGen

CompGen gives you access to over 50 million personal data records from family history books, municipal, address books, family announcements, gazetteers, lists of casualties, and more. A great resource for German genealogists!

D: DeepL

This machine translation tool at deepl.com can be a bit more accurate than Google Translate – just be sure to use it for short words and phrases and not entire documents, as that can go quite wrong in genealogy. See Six Reasons Why a Human is Better than Google Translate for Genealogy Documents.

E: Europe in the XIX. Century

This fun and interactive map tool shows you what Europe looked like in the 19th century. Zoom in, zoom out, and see the borders of what Europe was like when your ancestors lived there. Want more? This site has city maps, country maps, cadastral maps, and more. So fun!

F: FamilySearch German Genealogy Page

Just getting started in German genealogy? Or need more tips for your research? FamilySearch’s German Genealogy Page is the place to start, with research tools, information and links relating to German states, duchies, etc., maps, German genealogy vocabulary, and more. 

G: Genteam.at

This Austrian-based website hosts a collection of genealogical databases, especially useful for those searching in Austria and the Czech Republic. It also features a very helpful gazetteer for your research!

H: Hamburg Passenger Lists

Unlike the Bremen passenger lists, the Hamburg passenger lists still exist – and are great resources! This FamilySearch article on the topic contains links to these lists as well as some very helpful information about how to use them. 

I: International German Genealogy Partnership

The International German Genealogy Partnership is a wonderful organization with webinars, German genealogy conferences (coming up next June!), and a German genealogy newsletter you won’t want to miss out on.

J: JewishGen

Have Jewish ancestors? JewishGen is the site to use, with millions of records from around the world, gazetteers, and more.

K: Kirchenkalender

Have you worked with a church record and seen a church holiday, a special Sunday, or a feast day listed as your ancestor’s date of birth/marriage/death? This church calendar converter converts those feast days to actual dates for you when you type in the year of your record! 

L: Leo

Need a good German to English online dictionary? Leo is one of my favorites!

M: MeyersGaz 

Meyers Gazetteer is one of the most important sites for German genealogy. This collection of pre-WWI German towns offers a searchable database with a wildcard feature – so if you can only read some of the letters in your town name, type it in to MeyersGaz and see what comes up!

Ready for resources N to Z? Stay tuned! Make sure you are subscribed to the newsletter to get first access when it goes live!

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