What was considered Poland in 1844 vs. 1912?

Question

I am asking because the Volhynian death record of my 3x-greatgrandmother says she was born in "Poland". She died in 1912 und was approximately born in 1844 (she died aged 68). I also have war documents of one of her sons who stated that she and her husband were born in Poland. Did the borders change between 1844 and 1912?

I am seriously starting to doubt that they were really born in Poland, because I feel like I've searched everywhere, but I cannot find her or her husband or her children anywhere in Congress Poland. I used close DNA matches and their family trees as a tool to identify where they likely could have lived, but nothing has been found. I've also searched several Polish databases, but there is no trace of that family anywhere.

I have in fact found one Marianna Neumann in Poland who was born in 1844, but there is no marriage record to be found, so I cannot 100% confirm that this is the right one. Her children's birth records are not there either.

Does anyone here have any experience with Volhynian Germans who supposedly came from Poland? I've been searching for them for a year now and have found nothing, it's seriously starting to frustrate me.

Comments

The lack of DNA matches is most likely due to lack of participation in DNA testing, and the lack of matches on name searches is most likely due to lack of indexed (searchable) records.

There may be images of records online, but we are very far away still from computers being able to read handwriting, so the only way to find information from such images is to browse through them, one by one. This is a rather overwhelmingly impossible task if all you know is a country.

So, the first step has to be to try to localize better: can you find a record for any family member that names a town or village? Explore collateral lines, too, because "birds of a feather flock together".

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That‘s exactly my problem: There are no concrete records. All of the records I have either state „Poland“ as their birth place or nothing at all. One of their grandchildren didn‘t even seem to know their name,  his application for German citizenship in 1941 said that the grandparents were „unknown“. His grandmother died a year before he was born, I cannot believe that he didn‘t even know her name so I‘m starting to wonder if they tried to hide something.

Answer 1

Wikipedia has a map of the modern Polish-German border since 1945.

There is an additional illustration showing border changes of Poland showing shifts in Germany-Poland border. This covers the year 1000, 1569, 1939 and 1945

The modern border mostly follows the Oder and Neisse rivers.

All three illustrations can be enlarged for clarity.

See   wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany-Poland_border

Answer 2

Wikipedia has a good article on the Volhynian region, and the German Population. I would expect a loss of records due to World War II.

Answer 3

Wow!  They chopped that country up pretty often!  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Poland

Answer 4

My grandfather immigrated from the area now known as Zdunska Wola, Lodz, Poland. He was German. I do not speak Polish, Russian or German and have difficulty also. I have found that the names of towns there are in one of those languages in the records. When you know how they were spelled, it should help some. I'm still fumbling around in the dark, though,  I am still learning about the region but what I do know is they are from Upper Silesia. I have only found records on Genteka so far. I was told from early on he was born in Germany but various records say he is from there as well as Russia and Poland. It was a shock at first, but I have learned a lot of history on the region and things make more sense now. I know this probably doesn't help much, but there are others on this site who have more knowledge about the area and the languages.

Comments

Nothing on geneteka so far, I've tried all name variations I could think of. I'm starting to believe that their name was either Polonized to the point that it is now unrecognizable or they never really lived in Poland.

Answer 5

There were not many changes between 1844 and 1912, except that the Free City of Krakow disappeared in 1848.  The next big change came as result of the Treaty that ended the first World War, which re-created Poland with different boundaries than it had when it was gobbled by Austria, Prussia, and Russia.