Do you have Donauschwaben Ancestry? Come join the Donauschwaben Project

Question

The Donauschwaben Project is a sub-project of the Germany Project. We are seeking members to join us as we add and improve the profiles and pages related to our Donauschwaben ancestors.

The Donauschwaben Project is a helpful community that encourages collaboration between people from all around the world. The Donauschwaben Project covers all things Donauschwaben, the regions they lived in, customs and traditions, the villages they settled in and how they lived. If you have a passion for all things Donauschwaben, then join us in sharing our heritage with the world!

Membership is open to all who have: 

• signed WikiTree’s Honor Code
• been a WikiTree member for at least 3 months, and
• have made at least 100 contributions to our shared tree
• be a member of the Germany Project

Joining is easy … just post an ANSWER below (as opposed to a comment or reply - note that comments will be answered but then hidden).  Please state:

• that you'd like to join the project, 
• what your Donauschwaben-related interests are, and 
• what you want to contribute to the project.

The only thing you’ve got to lose is a brick-wall or two!

Comments

Hi Lori! I added some more tags to get you more views. Please edit them if you want. Thanks for posting this!

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Thanks, Traci!

Answer 1

I have interest in Donauschwaben, because my father's father and grandfather were prominent community members in Harta (Hungary), which was (re-)settled by a mix of Lutherans and Calvinists in the 1720s, at the behest of Count Paul Raday, who was the local landowner at the time. The village's Wikipedia page claims that the settlers mostly came from Württemberg, Hessen, Pfalz and Speyer.

However, I frankly have no interest in or energy for the Germany project right now. My grandfather's family came to Harta from a town that's now in Burgenland, not Germany.

Primarily what I could contribute is translations: Hungarian is my first language, and I can figure out written German as long as it's written in actual Latin letters. (Fraktur is mostly OK, but no, I do not count Kurrentschrift and its ilk as Latin letters.) I can also usually figure out the level of Latin found in church registers.

Answer 2

Yes I would like to join, my family is from Vemend Hungry.

Comments

Please keep in mind that the country has THREE syllables, not two. (Lifelong pet peeve, sorry.)

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Hi Teresa, What do you think you could contribute or what would you like to work on? Even though the main page has been around for a while, we are just getting this project off the ground. I would love to see some folks come on board and help with Free space pages for the other Donauschwaben areas that I am less familiar with.

Answer 3

Hi Lori,

 My brother Phil sent this along and we both just joined Wikitree. We've done a lot of work on our family from Katrinafeld (Katalinafalva). We definitely have Danube Schwebin roots.  I'm currently going thru Ellis Island Manifest searched... wish I could search by place of origin and not just name.  Look forward to looking thru what's up on your project page.    Mike Stumpf,   Flanders NJ

Comments

For Ellis Island searches, start with Steve Morse's Gold Form (https://stevemorse.org/).

(The problem, of course, is that the search is dependent on the indexing, and the indexing was dependent on volunteer indexers who generally couldn't read the manifests.)

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Hi Michael, once you and your brother get settled in, perhaps you'd like to join the project?

Also, not to add to your problematic search but don't rule out different or odd spellings of names and places. If you can find your ancestors on a US census that lists immigration year, that can help tremendously. Provided they had good memories for that type of thing.

Answer 4

Lori, I am interested in the Donauschwaben Project. My paternal grandmother's family were Donauschwaben from the small village of Kudritz, Hungary (now Gudurica, Serbia). I have been able to obtain copies of the parish records and am now working on a One Place Study for Kudritz (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Kudritz%2C_Hungary_One_Place_Study) as all the families there are interrelated. There wasn't a lot of new blood introduced over the 200+ years of German settlement.

I would love for my love of Kudritz and its people to be included in the overall study of the Donauschwaben. I have several thousand Kudritzers to add to WikiTree and source, and my time is limited, but I am willing to pitch in with what needs to be done.

Comments

Awesome Chad! We'd love to have you join the team. I was thinking about creating a page for my grandparents village as well so I'm anxious to take a look at what you've done. Feel free to add yourself to the team on the main page when you have some time.

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Thank you, Lori. There are a lot of resources available for researching the Donauschwaben. The difficulty is locating them, translating them, and sometimes worst of all, trying to read the poor penmanship of the parish priests.

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I know the struggle all too well! lol I have digital copies of the church books for Kathreinfeld and Sartcha. I love the priests that had beautiful handwriting!

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Kudritz was fortunate to have Alois Kimmel as their priest from 1843 until his death in 1887. He had beautiful handwriting. I question if his successor was even literate because his chicken scratches can barely be recognized as a language.

I have added myself as a team member and am willing to help with whatever you need. If there is anything particular you need done, just let me know. Thanks! 

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Hi. My great-grandmother is from Sartcha, from former Yugoslavia.

Could you tell me where this city is currently?

I would be grateful if you would answer me, even if you don't know.

Thank you very much!

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These are all the names that the village is known by: 

Sartscha (German)
Deutsch-Sartscha (German)
Neu-Sartscha (German)
Sartzia (Josephinische)
Németszarcsa (Hungarian)
Német-Szárcsa (Hungarian)
Román-Szárcsa (Hungarian)
Olah-Szárcsa (Hungarian)
Nova-Szárcsa (Hungarian)
Szárcsa
Sárca (Serbian)
Sărcia (Romanian)
Sutjeska, Serbia (Official)

I would suspect that the current name would be one of the Serbian listed above. I hope this helps.

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Thank you very much for your reply.

Helped me a lot!

Answer 5

One of the sets of my husband's maternal g-grandparents came from Bakowa and Tolwad to Gladstone, Stark County, North Dakota in the late 1890's and early 1900's.

Surnames DOLWIG and DUCKHORN

Answer 6

I am interested in the Bács-Bodrog, Hungary region.  I haven't yet transferred all of my ancestors from this region in Ancestry.com tree over to Wiki, but plan on doing so.

Comments

My mother's family was from the Bács-Bodrog region of Hungary , too!

Answer 7

I am interested in this projekt, because the family of a friend, whose familytree I'm working on comes from Großbetschkerek, that's Zrenjanin in Serbia today. I'm in posession of the familybooks of Großbetschkerek und Ulmbach (today Peciu Nou in Rumania).

Comments

What do you  think you might be able to contribute to the project or do you just want to be a resource for look up requests?

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I could look up requests in the familybooks of Großbetschkerek und Ulmbach whenever someone needs it. What I try to, is to get back where the families came from in Germany, they are called "Donauschwaben" but many of them didn't come from "Schwaben". The family of my friend Ralf Paulitschek came from Böhmen (Bohemia), some lines came from Lothringen (Alsac-Lorraine) and many others from Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate) specialy from around the river Mosel. As the families moved about in the Banate as well, it might be helpful to make a List with the surenames and where they came from?

Answer 8

hi!
i'd like to join the project  - lots of my ancestors were donauschwaben. besides adding new profiles i can help out with reading old documents if needed. i'm a native german speaker and capable (to some degree) of reading the old german cursive.

Answer 9

Hi Lori:  My grandparents came from Kathreinfeld, Benat, Hungary and were Donauschwaben.  I would like to join your project when I am eligible.  (I just registered on Wikitree as a guest.  My ancestors names were Stagl, Lenhardt, Michi, Zettlemeyer around 1840-1900's. I will be looking for two two books you mentioned.  Thank you.

Jo Ann Lenhardt, daughter of Rudolph Lenhardt, who was son of Mathias Lenhardt born 1881 in Kathreinfeld.

Answer 10

Still trying to determine what difference exactly projects make, but I would be in.