Germany Church Records

For information about records for non-Christian religions in Germany, go to the Religious Records page.

Overview
Church records (parish registers, church books) are an important source for genealogical research in Germany before civil registration began. They recorded details of baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials. The vast majority of the population was mentioned. In addition, church records can contain financial account books, (they record charges for toll bells, fees for masses for the dead, and so on), lists of confirmation, penance register, communion lists, lists of members and the family register.

Church records also often contain information on local minority faith populations. For example, often Evangelical Registers in West Prussia are also populated with Mennonite data, when Mennonites lived in those regions.

In general, you will need to know the religion of your ancestors as different religions kept separate records. The main religious division in Germany was between Catholics (Katholische) and Protestants, comprised mainly of Lutherans (Evangelisch) and Reformed (Reformierte). Catholic records are usually written in Latin or German, while other records will be written in the local language.

In many regions, it was also common for the local church records to function in the role of civil registries. This is especially true in the further eastern regions (ie. West Prussia, East Prussia).
 * [[MEDIA:German marriage handout templated jan 2017.pdf|Overview of Marriage Laws and Customs (handout)]]

History

 * The practice of keeping parish registers evolved slowly.
 * Lutheran churches in general began requiring records around 1540.
 * Catholic parish records were mandated by the pope in 1563.
 * By 1650 most Reformed parishes began keeping records.
 * A large number church records were destroyed in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).
 * Records for some parishes in the Pfalz and Rheinland were interrupted for several years when the French controlled those areas of Germany from 1792 to 1815 and introduced civil registration.
 * World War II caused destruction of some church records, particularly Lutheran records, in areas that became modern Poland.

For more information, see Germany Church History and Germany History.
 * [[MEDIA:German marriage handout templated jan 2017.pdf|Overview of Marriage Laws and Customs (handout)]]

Duplicate Church Records (Kirchenbuchduplikate)
'''Use duplicates, where available, to supplement parish registers that are missing or illegible. '''


 * Concerns about war or fire destruction led authorities in some areas to require the pastor to create a copy of each year's baptism, marriage, and burial entries. Most begin in the late 18th century.
 * After the defeat of Napoleon in 1812, local governments often found it helpful to have access to the baptism, marriage, and burial records kept by the clergy. Soon local pastors were required to provide the town administration with a yearly copy of these records.
 * Most are housed in central church archives or state archives, not at the local church.

Keep in mind that duplicates often differ slightly from the originals.


 * Baptisms, marriages, burials, and sometimes confirmations for each year are grouped together year by year, instead of being grouped by record type over a longer time period.
 * Community members belonging to a minority religion may not be recorded in the majority faith's original church books. Instead they may only be included in the Kirchenbuchduplikat, labelled as "birth register" rather than "baptism book."
 * A parish may have kept separate books for affiliated villages, both in the original and as duplicates. In a few instances, the parish in question may have included several villages, but only the book for one village has survived.

Information Recorded in Church Records
Later records usually give more complete information than earlier ones. The most important church records for genealogical research are baptism, marriage, and burial registers. Other helpful church records may include confirmation lists, family registers, lists of pastors, lists of members, account books, receipt books, and communion records.

Early records were usually written in paragraph form. As record keeping improved, columns were often used in the entries. Some areas used preprinted forms that required specific information. This format is usually easier to read because the vital information is in the same place in each entry.

Baptisms (Taufen)
Children were usually baptized a few days after birth. Baptism registers usually give:


 * the infant's name
 * parents' names
 * status of legitimacy (if illegitimate, this is sometimes indicated by a note in the margin or an upside-down or sideways entry)
 * names of witnesses or godparents (Taufzeugen, Gevattern, Paten) who could be relatives
 * baptism date.

You may also find:


 * the child's birth date
 * the father's occupation
 * the family's place of residence
 * death information, as an added note or signified by a cross. The cross alone does NOT imply that the individual died as a young child, but can be an indication the person died in the parish.

Marriages (Heiraten)
Marriage registers give:


 * the marriage date
 * the names of the bride and groom.

The registers may also:


 * indicate whether they were single or widowed
 * give the names of witnesses
 * include other information about the bride and groom, such as:
 * ages
 * birth dates and places
 * residences
 * occupations
 * parents' names
 * the names of previous spouses and perhaps their death dates.

The earliest marriage records may give only the names of the bride and groom and have little or no information about the couple's parents. Couples were often married in the bride's home parish. If there were no marriage restrictions, girls typically married for the first time between ages 18 and 25. Men typically married for the first time in their mid-twenties. This varied by location and time period.

Marriage Banns or Proclamations (Aufgebote)
The marriage registers of some churches give the dates on which the marriage banns were announced. For two or three weeks before the marriage, marriage banns (announcements of the intention to marry) were read and/or posted in church. This gave community members a chance to object to the marriage. Most proclamations took place on consecutive Sundays.


 * If the future spouses were from different parishes, the banns were read in each church. Before the marriage ceremony could take place, the non-local party was required to present the officiating pastor with a paper stating that the proclamations had been read, and there were no objections. A note stating that this person had been "dismissed" to marry elsewhere may be found in the marriage register.
 * The marriage banns themselves may exist in a separate record. Some parishes kept the marriage banns and other marriage information instead of marriage registers.
 * If a couple needed to get married quickly, permission to skip the proclamations could be obtained for a fee. This special permission is called a dispensation. Common reasons for a hasty marriage include pregnancy and imminent emigration.
 * Formal engagements were often associated with a celebration that required the families to purchase a certain amount of alcoholic beverages from the local pub. This custom was known as the "Weinkauf". Engagement dates may be given in the parish register as "der Weinkauf" or "weinkäuflich".

Burials (Begräbnisse)
Burial registers may give:


 * the name of the deceased
 * the date and place of death or burial
 * the deceased's age
 * place of residence
 * cause of death (list of old German causes of death)
 * the names of survivors
 * deceased's birth date and place
 * parents' names.

Information about parents, birth dates, and birthplaces may be inaccurate, depending on the informant's knowledge.

Funeral sermons: If the burial record mentions a sermon, you may be able to find a printed copy at a local library or archive. Funeral sermons often mentioned several generations of ancestors. See Germany Obituaries for more details.

Stillbirths or children who died before receiving baptism were not recorded the same way in all churches. The pastor or priest often determined how to record stillbirths in his parish. In some areas, stillbirths were recorded in baptism records. In other areas, stillbirths were only recorded in burial records. Some parishes listed stillbirths in both baptism and burial records. You should check both baptism and burial records if you suspect that a child was stillborn.

Confirmations (Konfirmationen)
Protestants were usually confirmed around age 14, Catholics about age 12. Some confirmation registers merely list:


 * the names of those being confirmed
 * the confirmation date

Other confirmation registers give additional information about those being confirmed, including:


 * their ages or birth dates
 * birthplaces
 * fathers' names.

Family Registers (Familienbücher)
Some parishes kept family registers that give information about each family group in the parish. Family registers are more common in southern Germany, especially in Württemberg and Baden after 1808. These registers list:


 * the names of the husband and wife
 * their birth dates and places
 * their marriage date and place
 * their parents' names, occupations, and residences.

Children are usually listed in chronological order with their:


 * names
 * birth dates
 * confirmation dates
 * marriage dates
 * death dates may be listed, particularly if they died as children or before marrying.

In some registers, when a child married and remained in the same parish, the register gives a “see page” reference and a page number where that particular child appears as the head of a household. Some family registers indicate whether the family moved to another village or emigrated to another country.

The information in family registers was compiled from other church books or obtained from the head of the household, and it is subject to error. Whenever possible, you should confirm all information found in family registers with baptism, marriage, and burial records.

Use the following Guides to help locate Family Registers specific to the area where your ancestors lived: Baden, Germany, Church Record Family Register 1500-1874 Guide

Parish Genealogy (Ortssippenbuch)
Pastors or genealogists sometimes compiled a village lineage book (Ortssippenbuch), which included each family in a parish. For details see Germany Town Genealogies and Parish Register Inventories on the Internet.

Locating Church Records
Church records were kept in the local parish of the church. The term parish refers to the jurisdiction of a church minister. Parishes are local congregations that may have included many neighboring villages in their boundaries. You might find them digitized and available online, or you might have to write to a centralized archive or to the local church where they are stored.

To use church records, you must know both your ancestor's religion and the town where he or she lived. You must also determine in which parish the town was located. Consult Meyer's Gazetteer Online. This will tell you whether the Catholic or Protestant church is in the town, and give you a list of the closest parish churches to the town.

FamilySearch Catalog
FamilySearch has acquired images of many, though not all, church records from various parts of the former German Empire. These can be found by searching for the parish in the FamilySearch catalog. Most have been digitized and, depending on contracts with archives or indexing entities, can be available online. Some records and collections must be viewed at a family history center (FHC), affiliate library or may be restricted to members of supporting organizations. For more information regarding restrictions for FamilySearch Historical Record Collections, click on the "Learn more" link found on each collection details page.

Online Availability Table: Catholics
100% coverage cannot be guaranteed. Expect to encounter restrictions on access to records at FamilySearch.

The Wiki page for each of the historical provinces of Germany, containing more detail about online records, and a map of Catholic dioceses can be found later in this article.

This table does not include areas no longer in Germany.

Online Availability Table: Protestants
100% coverage cannot be guaranteed. Expect to encounter restrictions on access to records at FamilySearch. Archion and Ancestry are both subscription websites. Ancestry and FamilySearch also have a collection of records taken from across Germany.

The Lutheran and Reformed/Calvinist churches have for the most part merged into a single Evangelical Church of Germany. This contains 20 "Regional Churches" which are listed in the table below. In some areas the records are in government archives so those areas are listed separately in the table.

The Wiki page for each of the historical provinces of Germany, containing more detail about online records, and a map of Regional Churches can be found later in this article.

Of areas no longer in Germany, only the Polish provinces whose records are stored in Berlin are included in this table.

Provinces
Additional online records for the individual provinces of the German Empire are listed on the Church Records page for each province:

Former German areas
Large swathes of the former German Empire were lost to other countries following the World Wars. See Finding Parish Registers for Germany Areas Now in Other Countries for more in depth information about researching in those areas.

Church Records Tools

 * [[Media:Localities.pdf|PDF Archive Inventory]]: "Part 1 of 2: Church records in Archives" - is an inventory of localities and the location or archive where their records should be found. The sixth column, "Archives", gives a number. To find the name and contact information, look up that number in the second column of this PDF file:[[Media:Archive Add .pdf|Part 2: Archive Addresses.]]
 * Berlin Evangelical Central Archive Inventory Online - The Evangelical Central Archive in Berlin (EZAB) holds many Lutheran church records from Eastern areas, including Ostpreussen, Schlesien, Posen, Brandenburg, Pommern, and Westpreussen. On the Website the box titled "Familienforschung" (family history research) includes a link to the listing of accessible parish registers under "Kirchenbuch-Suche".

FamilySearch Historical Records

 * Links to Germany church records in FamilySearch Historical Records

Visiting Churches
If the records you need are not online, you may find baptism, marriage, and burial records by contacting or visiting German parishes.

Most church registers are still maintained by the parish. You might obtain information by writing to the parish. Parish employees will usually answer correspondence written in German. Your request may be forwarded if the records have been sent to a central repository.

Evangelical Lutheran (Protestant) Parish Addresses
Towns search: Address list of the Protestant church

Catholic Parish Addresses
The Catholic Directory

Visiting State and Central Church Archives
If the records you need are not online, you may find baptism, marriage, and burial records by contacting or visiting German archives.


 * State Archives: Duplicate records from some parishes are in the state archives. Many of these records have been microfilmed and are available at the Family History Library. However, for records that are not microfilmed, you can sometimes write to the state archives to request searches of the duplicates. For more information, see Germany Archives and Libraries.
 * Church Archives: In a few parts of Germany, church records or duplicates have been gathered from the local parishes into central archives. Some gaps in the church records of local parishes could be filled using these records. Church archives are often unable to handle genealogical requests, but they can determine whether they have specific records you need, or they may recommend a researcher who can search the records for you.

Church Record Inventories
Church record inventories are essential tools for finding German records. They identify what records should be available for a specified parish and where to write for information on these records. They list the church records, their location, and the years they cover. Sometimes inventories explain which parishes served which towns at different periods of time.

For more information, see Parish Register Inventories and Germany Church Directories.

The following source contains a helpful list of German church record inventories with Family History Library call numbers and English annotations: Blodgett, Steven W. Germany: Genealogical Research Guide. Salt Lake City, Utah, USA: Genealogical Society of Utah, 1989. (FHL book 943 D27bs; film 1,573,115 item 2; fiche 6,001,630.)

Church record inventories are available for most areas in Germany. They are listed in the Place Search of the FamilySearch Catalog under:


 * GERMANY - CHURCH RECORDS - INVENTORIES, REGISTERS, CATALOGS
 * GERMANY, [STATE] - CHURCH RECORDS - INVENTORIES, REGISTERS, CATALOGS

Writing a Letter
Suggestions about how to write to local parishes for genealogical information are given in the German Letter Writing Guide. For details on finding the address for a parish church, click on the wiki research article for the state where the town is located. Links to those articles are at Jurisdictions 1945-present (for towns located in present-day Germany), and Research Articles on Former States of Germany. If your request is unsuccessful, search for duplicate records that may have been filed in other archives, church registers, or in civil registration offices.

Reading the Records
'''You do not have to be fluent in a foreign language to read church records! Only a limited vocabulary is used.''' Most Catholic records were written in Latin until the 1800s. Protestant records were usually written in German. Local dialects may have affected the spelling of some names and other words in the church records. In German areas under French domination during the early nineteenth century, many church records were kept in French. Sometimes the records combine two languages.


 * German Word List
 * Latin Word List
 * French Word List
 * German Script Tutorial


 * Reading German Handwritten Records:
 * Lesson 1: Kurrent Letters
 * Lesson 2: Making Words in Kurrent
 * Lesson 3: Reading Kurrent Documents
 * Old German Script Part 1
 * Old German Script Part 2
 * Old German Script (German Church and Civil Records) Part 3
 * List of Names in Old German Script A comprehensive list of German given names,  written in old script, with possible variations.
 * Old German Script Transcriber (alte deutsche Handschriften): See your family names in the script of the era. Type your name or other word into the font generator tool. Click on the 8 different fonts. Save the image to your computer and use it as you work with old Germanic records.

Downloadable Handouts

 * Print these handouts for ready reference when reading German Handwriting:
 * Kurrent Letters Handout
 * Numbers Handout
 * Birth Records Handout
 * Marriage Records Handout
 * Death Records Handout
 * Days and Months Handout
 * Common Symbols Handout
 * Common Abbreviations Handout
 * [[Media:Fraktur Font help - Wiki.pdf|Fraktur Font]]--Many forms and books are printed in this font.

Feast Dates

 * Calendar Changes in France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Low Countries


 * Each day of the year had several patron saints and was a feast day to honor those saints. Some vital events are recorded in church records only by the holy day (feast day) on the church calendar. For example, the feast day called “All Saints Day” [Allerheiligentag] is “1 November.” An online feast date calculator may be found at the Albion College website. Simply enter the year and click "Calculate."

Using "Left side-right side" Films
A FamilySearch Catalog entry may indicate that a German record was filmed "l.s.-r.s.", meaning "left-side- right side". The researcher must be aware that two sets of records (odd and even pages) must be searched. Sometimes each side of a book is found on a separate microfilm. In that case, it may be helpful to load both films on adjacent readers. If the entries go across both pages in the book, the side that identifies the key individuals (such as child and parents) must be searched first. Often the child and parents are listed on the left side of the page, and the year and birth/baptism date on the right. Thus it is very important to note the sheet numbers on the tag and identify the relevant entry with its position on the page.

Research Tips

 * Large cities have many churches, each serving part of the city. Rural churches often serve several villages and hamlets. Parish boundaries often changed, which affected where church records were kept.
 * Military churches in garrison towns and cities often kept their own records separate from other parishes.
 * In some parts of Germany, the death registers began later than the baptism and marriage registers, especially in Catholic records.
 * The registers of baptisms, marriages, and deaths from different geographic areas vary considerably in the amount of information they provide. Each jurisdiction had its own record-keeping rules, and each recorder had his own style.
 * In some areas, the records of people of other faiths were kept by the predominant church. The principal churches in Germany were the Catholic and Evangelical-Lutheran churches. For example, Jewish or Mennonite births were occasionally recorded at Catholic parishes, especially in areas where the church was used as the civil registration office.
 * Parishes occasionally indexed their records. Indexes are usually found at the beginning or end of the record. Moreover, archives sometimes compile indexes of church records. For example, the Lübeck Stadtarchiv has an alphabetical card index of all names in church records of several parishes at their archive. This index is at the Family History Library on 152 reels of microfilm (FHL films 450,475-626). Occasionally, private researchers create large indexes of church records. An example is the 764-microfilm Brenner collection described on page 38.

Search Strategies and Steps
Effective use of church records includes the following strategies:


 * Search for the relative or ancestor. When you find his or her birth record, search for the births of brothers and sisters.
 * Next, search for the parents' marriage date and place. The marriage record will often lead to the parents' birth records.
 * You can estimate the ages of the parents and determine a birth year to search for their birth records. If more than one possible candidate is found, search confirmation, marriage, and burial records to determine the correct individual. If available, census-type records or family books can be used as well.
 * Try to find the parents' death/burial entries, since these records may give their age at death.


 * Use the above strategies for both the father and the mother.
 * If earlier generations are not in the record you are using, search neighboring parishes and other denominations.
 * Search the burial registers for all family members.