Advanced German Records

Optional Course Print Materials: German: Germans Outside of Germany

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

Since the 19th century (or earlier), Germans have migrated to other countries to make their home. Whether  evacuating for the sake of safety (seeking asylum), moving into countries where other family members resided, or simply emigrating to remove themselves from the homeland, researching these individuals means considering various types of records found in the country they called home.

This course explores the German migration out of Germany as late as the mid-20th century and includes settlements in some locations as early as pre-15th century while others will focus on 19th and 20th centuries only. The countries addressed are those where significant populations of Germans have been or are still found. In some locations, the region has not been perceived as “German” (i.e., German has not been an officially recognized language). These locations will include the UK and Ireland; Oceania (Australia and New Zealand); North America (US, Canada, and Mexico); European Countries (where German is not an official language); Latin American Countries (Central and South America and the Dominican Republic); Africa (select countries with German populations, past or present), Asia, and India. We'll explore why Germans left Germany and where they went. 

We'll explore records that document your German ancestor in their new homeland as well as where to find these records. We'll also explore German communities and the records they left behind, including histories, periodicals, and compiled sources. Each module ends with resources for social media websites and groups where researchers may connect with their German relatives. 

Course Length: 8 weeks

Optional Print Course Material: German: Naming Practices

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

There are a number of common misconceptions about “German naming patterns” including that they follow a prescribed formula in the majority of, or all, families. This may be true regionally (e.g., in a particular region of Germany and, in some cases, carried over into the country where the family emigrated to, if that happened), but there is no hard and fast rule and to expect that is potentially damaging to research. 

This course will examine the various types of naming patterns, name variations (for surnames and given names), regional influence on names, occupational influence on names, period influence on names (e.g., names changed from German to French during the Napoleonic years), the influence of the Church on baptismal names, the phenomenon of the “Naming Day” and its effect on the name used in a person’s adult life, and the commonality of reversing first and middle names during a person’s life. Spelling issues on documents, the use of signatures and occupations to separate people with the same name in a given community, and the phenomenon of Anglicizing names when people migrated will all be taken into account.

Optional Print Course Material: German: Compiled Sources

*Course material will only be sent to students who are registered in the course.

German genealogical research should include a careful and detailed review of “compiled sources.” Compiled sources are simply defined as the findings of previous researchers. Today they exist as personal websites, online family trees, genealogical articles in periodicals, book-length family histories, genealogical compendia, and even as manuscript collections. What is surprising to most researchers is that these types of records exist for German families. What is perhaps even more unexpected is that there are millions of Germans and their families named in such records. Moreover, many are reasonably well-indexed, and not all that difficult to access, even for researchers who don’t read German well. 

In this course we will explore various compiled sources including Collections and Databases, Family Histories and Bibliographies, Lineage Books, Periodicals, Biographical and Local Sources. 

Course Length: 7 weeks