German civil registration, oh my

Question

So, I've learnt much to my astonishment that there is no complete and on-line civil registration index for Germany.

My German ancestors all predate civil registration, BUT I had been hoping to build out their descendants, which involves civil registration.

The next step is to contact the local Standesamt. Does anyone have experience of this? I'm aware correspondence would need to be in German.

I assume they at least have an index. Does the index have parent's name as well as children's names for birth and death?

Would they likely search indexes for me for relevant people and provide that information or are they rigidly of the model give us a name and date and we'll give you a certificate?

What sort of prices do they charge? Do they offer payment options that are easy to use for overseas residents?

Is my best option just to wait and hope it all ends up on-line one day?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The short answer is don't wait.  Registration is a local affair and it is hard to conceive that all of this will be coordinated to be put online in the near future. On the other hand, the Standesämter are keeping what is called Familienbücher where all relevant details of resident families are kept (marriages, deaths, children, often marriages of children) and copies can be obtained. Don't know the current prices but you will have to document that this is your family and you'll have to know at least one index person. Most Standesämter can be reached via email, found on the official websites of the towns in question. They also keep the new addresses once somebody moves away.

And don't dismiss the churches, they may actually be easier to find records. For Protestants it's Archion, they do let you do a search for free but charge for actual records. Catholics need to go through the local church to find out where records are kept.

Comments

Thanks Helmut! I'll just have to dive in and try my luck.

Some of the relatives will have died after 1871, hoping they didn't move.

I still have some church records to pull together first. They are unindexed but on microfilm in Salt Lake City, and I've paid a researcher to search them for me.

I always feel a bit bad asking churches for help, partly because I'm not religious.

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No way to get around the churches since there was no civil registration before the 1870's except for a few areas that were under French control during Napoleon.

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Matricula (https://data.matricula-online.eu/en/ for the English version) is also a great resource for original Catholic parish church records in Germany and much of the EU.  Map based church locations and very well organized.

Answer 2

i have been interested in finding my mothers family in germany and czech.  i have no way of searching because i do not read or speak german.  its has been difficult.    

I would be interested, if we had an english version of what we have here to find her ancestors.

Theresia

Comments

Wait until you see old German handwriting! I've had a baptism record transcribed for me and even knowing what it says I still can't make out 90 percent of it.

I can't speak German either, I still managed to post on a German language genealogy forum and get help. It was ahnenforschung.net Try it out. The worst that can happen is you'll get ignored.

Google Translate is your friend for reading. Writing is trickier. I use Google translate and linguee.com and then search my draft sentences on Google to see if that phrase is used elsewhere, meaning it probably makes sense.

If that sounds too hard try asking for translation help somewhere like the duolingo forum, not that I've tried myself. You also could just ask your friends if they know someone who knows someone who speaks German. You might be surprised.

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Mark, you can post the transcription … or even a scan of the original here and add the appropriate tags (like "german" and "language") and I promise you that someone on WikiTree (more often than not, Helmut, who answered this question) will provide the translation pretty quickly … and with explanations of anything that might not be immediately obvious, too!  Ya gotta love WikiTree!!!!

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It did cross my mind to ask here, but figured a German language site would have a bigger pool of people familiar with old German handwriting. I quite enjoyed the challenge.

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If you do contact the local Standesamt I would recommend to write in German and English. Do write your English request and add the same text translated to German by some translation program. Most people in Germany do learn English in school, even if they might not speak it well, they might understand your written English request. Older civil registry records are often transfered to some kind of local archives. The Standesamt can give you the contacts. If you have exact dates and names prices are quite reasonable, but if they will have do to some research they might refuse or charge their effort by the hour. But there´s no general rule. It all depends on the specific Standesamt.

You probably will be able to only get information which is not privacy protected (birth about 110 years ago, marriages 70 years ago and death about 30 years ago...). The other information is restricted to close relatives only...

If you have some specific dates & places which are in protestant regions I might look them up for you at www.archion.de Only some church books are already scanned. I currently have a paid account and could tell you whether records are available.

Answer 3

Where are you looking in Germany?

I use this site to figure out where the surnames might show up  http://familienanzeigen.genealogy.net/  if you run Chrome browser you can just right click and translate the page.  

Nachname is the surname.  

Hope that helps.

Answer 4

There are regions in Germany where the civil registration data is available online. The state of Hesse may be the prime example, with all civil registration data (up to the limits set by data protection laws) available via Hessische Geburten-, Ehe-, Sterberegister. Unfortunately, most German states do not offer a similar service (yet).