What is a "settlement" in Germany in the early 1800s?

Question

In trying to find a town or village named Berg as the locale for a Carl von
Berg, b in 1800s, I found the village first as a birthplace in wikitree of

Adolph Von der Burg--Born about 1675 in Berg, Ahrweiler, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany

(who naturally may not have any relationship  to my ancestor)  and then on a list of Settlements in Rhineland-Palatinate. A rough map (  http://www.maplandia.com/germany/rheinland-pfalz/koblenz/ahrweiler/altenahr/  )

shows something that might be an area within an area, with ahrweiler/aktenahr being a larger unit it's within. This raises another question:  how would one list a settlement as a place of residence, of birth, or of death ?

Answer 1

Berg is an "Ortsgemeinde" i.e. the lowest level of political organization in Germany, and in Rheinland-Pfalz also a part of a group of towns that have joined to manage certain communal functions together. That group is called "Verbandsgemeinde" and it's name is Altenahr. Berg is in the Landkreis (county) Ahrweiler in the state Rheinland-Pfalz.

But those are the current legal names. In 1675 it was (most likely, I don't have a detailed map at hand right now) part of the Kurfürstentum Trier, also called Erzstift Trier or Kurtrier.

Comments

Thanks, Helmut. German history and organization is complex. I hope the early Germans found this organizating quality helpful and not the Big Brother is watching kind of thing. Communality, working together to get jobs done can have marvelous effects. Much good can come.

Answer 2

Most of my German ancestors settled in Indiana in Parkers Settlement. Since I have visited there it appears to me that it is on a small town of people of one nationality.  My grandparents lived in Evansville, Indiana in the German township.  Everyone that I met that lived there was German and they spoke in German to each other.

Comments

Would that simple (usually the best) idea you state also be the definition in EUROPE? I think because of the names of some places, the definition is political, not simply a clustering within a particular spoken language. That's a guess, of course, or "an inference" in polite company. :>-)

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A  friend that has done a lot of research in Germany gave me the following comment:  "Settlement" is translated "Siedlung" in German. The basic meaning is the same: a community created by the first people to occupy a new land (ie, the first "settlers").  If Germans use "Siedlung" in this meaning, they are probably referring to a settlement created by immigrants overseas, not in Germany itself, which has been settled for so long. However, since about the turn of the 20th century, "Siedlung" has been used in a different way, to refer to new, planned communities in Germany, usually built on the outskirts of cities and towns (similar to the word "subdivision" in America, although not quite the same).   "Siedlung" will also be used for the housing complexes for the families of American military personnel stationed in Germany (for instance, the Heuberg-Siedlung near Sembach Air Base).  The most common word for community in German is "Gemeinde" (which can also mean "congregation", as for a church).  The word for village is "Dorf", city is "Stadt".

Answer 3

The Berg you mention is currently a municipality (Gemeinde)

See here (although it is a German website)

http://www.berg-aw.de/

Comments

Thanks so much, Martin.

Is the term "Gemeinde" ever applied to larger units, for instance, a "Palitinate"? (of which I also don't know the definition). But I will find it of course.

I had already visited that web site and found of course no provision for an English translation. The photos were fun and lovely.

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No Gemeinde is simply a relatively small area. I can translate it, but I'm not sure what would be useful.

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A Gemeinde is somewhat akin to a Township in English, actually, an area of a few villages in the neighborhood of a bit bigger town.

A Seidlung is in present day Germany the equivalent of an Anerican "subdivision", but could also be construed to be rather like a hamlet, a collection of a few closely related houses.

None of these is the Palatinate, which was the area ruled by the Bishops of Trier a few centuries ago in what is now the Bundesland ("state,in "American English") of Rheinland-Pfalz, which is a bigger area than any of the above and located south of Bonn, north and west of Frankfurt am Main, and includes the cities of Mainz, Kaiserslautern, and Koblenz, to name just a few.

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Ahhh! and yes, Dan, & it's very complex! In the US, we have villages (very small, especially seen in New England and the Eastern US), towns (have a mayor), cities (have mayors; can contain every large set of towns), and cosmopoltian areas (Los Angeles, NYC, San Francisco) that include cities; complicating matters, L.A. and SF are also themselves very large towns.  A professional in city planning could do a much better job of outlining thus than I have here.