G2G: Looking for somebody with knowledge of Germany [closed]

Question

On the "Let others know what locations you are working on" page, we have a whole lot of unconnected branches with German connections, and unconnected German notables. I've been thinking that it would probably be a good idea to divide them up by lands (I believe that's the correct name for divisions of Germany), but I don't know enough about the subject to know how many lands there are, what their names are, or which cities and towns are in which land. Is there an expert on Germany who'd be willing to take on the task of dividing up those German branches and notables?

Comments

Wouldn't it depend on the time period?

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It most certainly could.  But that depends upon whether you are dividing up Germany based on present day divisions or on past divisions (which were many, and were constantly changing their borders and names).

     I will run through present day Germany now:  there are 16 Länder.

Berlin---                   Berlin

Bremen----              Bremen, Bremerhavn

Bayern----               Munich, Nurenberg, Augsburg,  

                               Regensburg, Ingolstadt, Würzburg,

                               Bamberg, Bayreuth

*Baden-Wurttemberg--   Stuttgart, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Ulm

xBrandenburg---      Potsdam, Cottbus, Frankfurt/Oder

*Hamburg----           Hamburg

*Hessen---       Frankfurt/Main, Wiesbaden, Offenbach/Main, Darmstadt, Kassel,

xMecklenburg-Vorpommern---      Schwerin,

*Niedersachsen---Hannover, Braunschweig [Brunswick], Oldenburg

*NordRhein-Westfalen---  Cologne, Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Bonn, Wuppertal, Oberhausen, Solingen, Siegen

*Rheinland-Pfalz---     Mainz, Koblenz, Kaiserslautern, Trier, Worms, Speyer

*Saarland---      Saarbrücken

xSachsen---     Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Zwickau

xSachsen-Anhalt-----   Magdeburg, Halle

Schleswig-Holstein---   Kiel

xThüringen----     Erfurt, Jena, Weimar, Gera

Americans with early German immigrant ancestors would best consult first those Länder with a * before the name.  Those Länder with an x before the name were part of former East Germany, and would likely not be a source for late 20th century immigrants.  But of course, all rules are breakable.

     Before 1945 there could be several hundred quasi-sovereign states of various sizes within (and sometimes without) the Holy Roman Empire, depending upon the period which one is considering.  It would take months to list them all.

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Thank you, Dan. I'd be inclined to use the current Länd that a town or city is part of now, even in cases where it was in a different polity at the time the person was born, just as I would use "Ontario" rather then "Upper Canada" or "Canada West" for people who were born where I live now.

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Hello! I don't know if this is helpful since the original post was over 4 years ago,  but way back in the mid-'80s to late '80s, I lived in Germany. That was when we still had East and West Germany. The town I lived in was called Boeblingen and it was pretty close to Stuttgart (just under a half hour away via the autobahn). I then moved to the base near Panzer Kaserne but frequented Robinson Barracks as well as Patch Barracks and the surrounding area. I don't know if I would be able to answer any questions, but I sure would be willing to try.

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Thank you for the offer, L. I got the answers I needed, and have created sections for 11 current Länder, plus Prussia. Eventually, I'll get around to adding sections for the remaining Länder, if somebody doesn't beat me to it.

Answer 1

German genealogist Dieter Lewerenz has a space page at Wikitree: German territorial structure in the course of history. While it's work in progress, a lot can be gleaned already with regard to which German territory belongs to which category with regard to point in time.

Comments

Dieter has done a wonderful job creating a description of the territories over history.

I have created a simplified overview of the migration categories in the mid-19th Century: :German_Diaspora:_Emigration_during_the_mid-19th_Century. The left-hand column shows German speaking sovereign states. The cells link to migration categories that I have found.

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Thanks, Steve. That is extremely helpful!

Answer 2

Greg if you go to the Germany Project you will see how we have used the various German states as regional divisions.  

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Germany_Regions_Team

Comments

Thank you, Laura. That gives me something to start from.

Answer 3

I am still adding profiles to the Hindenburg-cluster, trying to finally find a connection. There is also the cluster of the siblings Scholl which I work on and which is still unconnected. And I added a bunch of unconnected Eckstädts, because they are somehow to me related, but I still don't know how. Currently I won't add more clusters to my watchlist aka workload.

Answer 4

Unless you are dealing with people after WWI, you need to start with the old German Empire borders. And realize that country only existed after 1871. In 1800 you would be dealing with a multiplicity of independent entities. So you need to know the changing political configuration and borders of the area you are looking at, over the time span of the people you are looking for. Plus whichever country that area belongs to today. A good set of maps is key.

Comments

Melinda:

Look at Dieter's space page on Wikitree (see next answer).

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Melinda and Oliver, you are correct in what you say about the complexity of tracking the pre-unification states that existed before the German Empire was formed, and also that modern day Germany does not occupy the same territory that the German Empire did.

However, I don't think you understand why I posed the question in the first place, nor that, as far as I'm concerned, the problem is solved.

Here is how I work:

When I'm adding a new branch to any of the unconnected branches pages, I look at the Family List for the contact profile for that branch, and sort it by birthdate. Then, in the listing for that branch, I list those countries in chronological order. For countries with lots of profiles (and therefore lots of unconnected branches), I break the sections down into smaller entities (states, territories, and the District of Columbia for the United States of America, Länder for Germany, counties for England, provinces and territories for Canada, and so on. I should subdivide Ireland by counties, because there are a ton of unconnected branches with Irish connections, but I haven't even finished adding alll the Länder for Germany yet. When the are five or more unconnected branches which have births in a Länd that I haven't made a section for in the "Other Länder or Unknown" section of the "Unconnected Profiles in Europe" page, I add a new section for that Länd.)

Now, I'm not looking for the precise term at the time for each person. (Otherwise, the number of regions per country would get huge.) So I try to match up the location with a current Länd. If I can find a city or town name, then I look up what Länd that place is now. If the profile only lists the name of that city or town, and there are multiple places with that name, then I skip that place. I only list a country or region when I can identify it unambiguously.

The reason that I'm being deliberately imprecise is because I'm trying to help those who are looking to work on connecting branches by place which branches include profiles that were born in that place, however many times the name of the place has changed in the past. (The one exception to that principle that I have made so far is to include "Preussen", because there are scads of branches with profiles whose locations are no more precise than "Prussia". And, since the borders of Prussia are not fully within modern Germany, I just use Prussia so that people will know that they actually might be working in Poland. (I may eventually have to create sections for the Holy Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire if I turn up enough unconnected branches with profiles with locations no more precise than the Empire level.)

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Thanks, Greg, for the explanation! I think I got it, and yes, the problem isn't solved yet ... Alas!, I don't have an answer (yet) ... :(