Weiding, Bavaria, Germany Genealogy

History And Geography
Weiding is a small town in eastern Bavaria. It has a cemetery, and it's own church. It is a municipality in the district of Schwandorf.
 * In the 10th and 11th centuries, Bavarian settlers wandered from Nabburg to the east.
 * Weiding was founded before 1270 and is one of the oldest villages of the region.
 * It frequently changed ownership and in 1803, it was finally sold to the Earl of Du Moulin-Eckart to whom it still belongs today.See Weiding, Schwandorf in Wikipedia

Online Records

 * Heiratsbelege: Weiding, 1862-1915 Civil records of marriage banns, marriage supplements, and permissions to change residence for Weiding, Bavaria, Germany are available on microfilm. This link takes you to the library catalogue with the film numbers. They might be available at a Family History Center, but there are plans to digitize everything eventually.
 * Bavaria, Germany, WWI Personnel Rosters, 1914-1918 includes information on soldiers from Weiding and can be found at Ancestry.com
 * Various records can be found through the Meta-search tool on the website of the German Society for Computer Genealogy.

Civil Registration
Weiding is in the Admininstative Region of Oberpfalz, in the district of Schwandorf and has a municipal association with the nearby town of Schonsee. There is not a civil records office in Weiding, but there might be information available at the Schonsee Rauthaus. The records they have are great and it is a good place to start. However, the person over vital records is not always there or always available to assist with research. It is important to contact them ahead of time to make an appointment. The good news is that they don't usually charge for making a copy of anything they are able to find on your family. (As of 2010) Schönsee Standesamt Hauptstraße 25 92539 Schönsee Germany Phone: 09674 / 9212-0 Fax: 09674 / 9212-29 info@vg-schoensee.de Website

Catholic Church Records
In 1280 a stone church of St. Nikolaus is mentioned in an urbarium. It was destroyed by the Hussites in the 15th century. The rebuilt church burned down in 1836. The current church was built in 1842 and like the others dedicated to St. Nikolaus. Ninety-five per cent of the inhabitants of Weiding are Catholics.

St. Nikolaus Catholic Church
Mittere G. 10 92557 Weiding Germany It is necessary to go to the Catholic Archive in Regensburg to access the parish records of Weiding.

Regensburg Bischöfliches Zentralarchiv - for most of Oberpfalz
St.Petersweg 11-13 D-93047 Regensburg Germany The records in the Regensburg Catholic Archive are on microfiche which takes time and patience to read. It is necessary to make an appointment to use a film reader. There is a 7 Euro fee per day per person to do research and a charge per document you have copied.(I think we paid about 8 Euros per page) This can add up to an expensive way to gather information, however, you can just take a pencil (not an ink pen) and paper and write down what you find. The people that work there don't usually have much time to assist you....so go planning on spending the first half of the day just figuring out how to use their system. Also, if you complete your research at the end of the day they may not be able to have the documents you need copied until the next day. You can return the next day to pick them up or you can pay them to mail them to your home.br
 * List of parish registers This link takes you to a listing of the records available on microfiche at the Regensburg Catholic Archive. It is organized in alphabetical order of the towns and villages in the diocese. It also tells you what kind of documents are available in which years. It is good to know that Taufen means baptisms, Trauungen means marriages, and Beerdigungen means burials.
 * Information for requesting research by the archive for a fee.
 * The archive will do genealogical research for you. Requests can be made by mail or email. The fee for genealogical research is Euros 35.00 per half an hour plus postage.

Lutheran Church Records
Bavaria was and is predominantly Catholic. If your ancestors lived in Schönsee, there is a chance they affiliated with the Catholic church because of the prohibitive distance to a Lutheran church. (There is not a Lutheran Church in Schnösee.) However, if you do not find them in Catholic records, you should search the Lutheran records.

Cemeteries
There is a cemetery in Weiding. If you want to find information on your ancestors in a cemetery, keep in mind that in most Bavarian cemeteries the grave plots are recycled as often as every 25 years. (sometimes 50 -100 years). Schönseer Str. 5 92557 Weiding Germany