German Research Division Projects

Where are these records from?
Württemberg in Southwest Germany

What time period do they cover?
From the mid-1700s through about 1940


Why are these records useful?
The family registers contain BMD information for parents and children, plus name, residence and status for parents of parents. Destination given when a person leaves town. Cross-referenced to other sheets; often also to vital registers.


Will the index be linked to images?
Yes, the images are online at https://www2.landesarchiv-bw.de/ofs21/olf/struktur.php?bestand=5632 . They were microfilmed by the Gatermann firm around 1944 and were digitized by the Baden-Württemberg state archives.


What is being indexed?
The index will not contain all family members, but instead only information about the head of household and their spouse(s). We will index their names as well as dates and places of birth.

Where are these records from?
The Eastern German provinces, including cities such as Halberstadt, Dresden, Eisenach, Dessau and Frankfurt an der Oder

What time period do they cover?
primarily 19th century


Why are these records useful?
These are vital registers that help to identify individuals and link generations


Will the index be linked to images?
Yes, the images are online on FamilySearch . They were microfilmed by the Gatermann firm around 1944.


What is being indexed?
Names, Locations, Year and record number

Where are these records from?
Aufbau was a newspaper published in New York for German-Jews, but was distributed worldwide. Families published notices to share news of births, engagements, marriages and deaths as well as ads for birthdays and anniversaries.

What time period do they cover?
The newspaper was published from 1934 to 2003. This project is a continuation of the Aufbau Indexing Project, conceived of by Harry Katzman about 30 years ago, which thanks to many volunteers resulted in about 57,000 indexed announcements already available in the JewishGen Germany database. There are an estimated remaining 50,000 notices from the 1950s to the mid-1970s

Why are these records useful?
Surname adoption was decreed in 1808 by Napoleon. These relatives are used to bridge from the patronymic names (x son of y) to newly adopted surnames and can contain names and ages of Jews grouped by family units.

Will the index be linked to images?
Yes, images are already online at https://archive.org/details/aufbau .

What is being indexed?
Names, dates of events, towns or origin in Germany along with surviving family members in obituaries. Knowledge of German is helpful but not required.

Are there other important project tasks?
Yes, we need volunteers to identify the newspaper pages with notices on the Internet Archive and proofreaders.

Where are these records from?
Western Germany, west of the Rhine

What time period do they cover?
circa 1808. Note that the records are mostly in French.


Why are these records useful?
Surname adoption was decreed in 1808 by Napoleon. These relatives are used to bridge from the patronymic names (x son of y) to newly adopted surnames and can contain names and ages of Jews grouped by family units.


Will the index be linked to images?
Yes, most of the images are online on FamilySearch .


What is being indexed?
These ares surname adoption lists so we will index the old patronymic name and the new surname along with the location of residence