JEWISH GENEALOGY IN NORTHERN GERMANY

You have Jewish ancestors from the following regions and former principalities?

Kingdom of Hanover (including East Frisia, Osnabrück)

Granduchy of Oldenburg

Hamburg/Altona

You want to trace these families back, learning about their ancestors, finding out where they came from orginally? You want to get familiar with the history of their Jewish community? You need professional research assistance offered by historians located in the area?

“Jüdische Zivilstandsregister” and much more

We offer research on the so called “Jewish civil registers” and a lot of other relavant sources. These “civil registers” reach back to about 1828-1844, depending on the region and on the record situation for each synagogue parish. And for the 1828/44-1875 period, these “civil registers” are in fact the most important and the most reliable source for Jewish Genealogical research in North Germany.

Records about Jews in every town and district

But there is much more, dozends of different record groups which are important for the research on your Jewish family. The German states and towns were very keen to control the number of Jews in each parish, town and city and they made the Jewish families pay high fees (so called “Schutzgelder”) just for the right of permant residence. Moreover the allowed professions were restricted as well and these restrictions were controlled. The foundation and the existance of Jewish school and cemeteries was a matter of state/town recording and control. This means that we have some records about each Jewish community in the holdings of the involved town or Amt (county-like district) and often as well in the archves of the central state government. And a lot of these records reach back to the 1700s.

A lot of the individual so called “certificates of protection” (Schutzbriefe) and applications for such certificates are preserved as well. It is not at all seldom that the applicant included information about his home town, about the years he already lived in the principality, etc.

Jewish Cemeteries

The grave stones of a great number of Jewish Cemeteries in Northern Germany are well documented in books, often with photos, transcriptions and translations of every grave stone. If the cemetery of the town/parish your ancestrors came from is already documented we will of course use this documentation in order to prepare the research at the archive and to find out about the most promising approach and the most relevant records for your family. Copies out of these documentations will be included in our research reports. But we will of course not charge for research which already has been done by others.

The chances of Jewsish genealogical research

The record situation for Jewish genealogy in Northern Germany is surely more difficult than for Christian families because we don not have centuries of parish registers. But although this research is challenging, often it is possible to find out much more than you would expect.

For detailed information about my research assistance, just click here and return to the homepage of

HISTORICAL RESEARCH SERVICES
Jens Müller-Koppe
hrs@hist.de
Oslebshauser Heerstr. 147
D - 28329 Bremen
phone: +49-421-577 80 20