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Germany
Research Outline
   

Table of Contents
Introduction
German Search Strategies
Records At The Family History Library
Familysearch™
The Family History Library Catalog
Archives And Libraries
Biography
Cemeteries
Census
Church Directories
Church History
Church Records
     General Historical Background
     Information Recorded In Church Records
     Locating Church Records
     Search Strategies
Civil Registration
     General Historical Background
     Regional Differences
     Information Recorded In Civil Registers
     Locating Civil Registration Records
Court Records
Directories
Dwellings
Emigration And Immigration
     Finding The Emigrant's Town Of Origin
     Emigration From Germany
     Records Of German Emigrants In Their Destination Countries
Gazetteers
Genealogy
Handwriting
Heraldry
Historical Geography
History
Jewish Records
Land And Property
Language And Languages
Maps
Military Records
     Types Of Military Records
     Foreign Military Service
     Locating Military Records
     Military History
Names, Personal
Naturalization And Citizenship
Newspapers
Nobility
Obituaries
Occupations
Periodicals
Population
Probate Records
Schools
Societies
Other Records
For Further Reading
Comments And Suggestions

BIOGRAPHYLook this term up in the glossary.

A biography is a history of a person's life. In a biography you may find birth, marriage, and death information and the names of parents, spouses, children, or other family members. Use information from a biography carefully because it may contain inaccuracies.

Many brief biographies have been gathered and published in collective biographies, sometimes called biographical encyclopediasLook this term up in the glossary. or biographical dictionariesLook this term up in the glossary.. These works usually include only biographies of prominent or well-known German citizens. Other collective biographiesLook this term up in the glossary. feature biographies of specific groups of people, such as merchants or students of an academy.

The source below is a collection of 263 important German biographical works published between 1700 and 1910:

Deutsches biographisches Archiv = The German Biographical Archive. München: K. G. Saur, 198-? (FHL fiche 6002158-9.) This work, on 1,447 microfiche, refers to about 225,000 eminent Germans.

An index to this collection is listed below:

Koch, Hans-Albrecht. Deutscher Biographischer Index (German biographical index). 4 vols. München: K. G. Saur, 1986. (FHL book 943 D32k Vol. 1-4; computer number 288688.)

There are several other major collections of German biographies. Listed below are two important collections:

Führende Persönlichkeiten (Leading personalities). See the “Genealogy” section of this outline.

Neue Deutsche Biographie (New German biography). Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1953-. (FHL book 943 D3nd; computer number 227435.) The first 17 volumes, published through 1993, include the surnames Aachen to Moller.

Collective biographies at the Family History Library are usually listed in the Locality Search of the catalog under:

GERMANY - BIOGRAPHYGERMANY, [STATE] - BIOGRAPHY

You will also find some biographical information in German encyclopedias.

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