The three large 19th-century European empires—Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia—all collapsed either during, or as a result of, World War I. New countries and altered boundaries emerged, often with different names or different spellings of geographical locations. Fortunately, finding aids for locations in those empires—with their old names and old spellings—still exist. This article discusses the most valuable finding aids for locations in each of the empires, all of which are available at the U.S. Library of Congress. The article also describes how to enhance the value of their use, in most cases by simultaneously consulting other works to determine a location of interest and the contemporary spelling of its name.

A wealth of information, including the number of Jewish residents of any given town anywhere in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, long has been available in the Gemeindelexikon der im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreiche und Länder (Communities in the imperial dictionary of kingdoms and countries represented), online in full-text¹—but checking each of the volumes to find a town of interest can be a tedious process.² Now an efficient resource is available to use as a substitute index for the entire Gemeindelexikon, instead of having to search laboriously through each of the 14 volumes. It is Josef Kendler’s Orts-und Verkehrs-Lexikon von Oesterreich-Ungarn (Location and transport encyclopedia of Austria-Hungary), newly on the reserve shelves of the Geography and Map Reading Room at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.³ The 1905 publication date makes this large reference work almost exactly contemporaneous with the publication of the Gemeindelexikon, for the Austro-Hungarian Empire based upon a December 31, 1900, census.

Various European libraries hold the Kendler book, but the U.S. Library of Congress is the only U.S. public library with a copy. The Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress plans, within a few months, to post a digital copy online; readers now may access the book’s catalog card on the Library of Congress website.⁴

The Kendler book is valuable in its own right as well, not just as an index source to the Gemeindelexikon. It presents considerable data about locations throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including the nearest court, post office, railway station, and similar information. For genealogists, the most valuable data probably is the name and spelling of every location in the Empire as it was prior to World War I. The Treaty of the Trianon of June 4, 1920, divided Hungary into various parts, giving birth to Czechoslovakia, ceding the Burgenland portion of Hungary to Austria, and making other territorial adjustments. Kendler offers a view of the Empire as it was at its last and most extensive—when it included large areas of the Balkans, today the republics of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia.

Although the Gemeindelexikon and the Kendler book are written in German (some portions use other languages as well), a researcher unfamiliar with these languages should be able to use them easily because they largely are compilations of location names. Many of the narrative entries have already been translated into English and are available online at the Polish Roots website.⁵ The few phrases that do require translation into English may easily be typed into Google Translator or similar online translation engines.

Using the Online Gemeindelexikon

Navigating the online version of the Gemeindelexikon requires some explanation.

1. After deciding which one of the 14 of the Empire’s kingdoms and/or provinces (called a “state” in the online version) includes a town of interest, consult the index for that volume. The town name appears before the name of a larger location (in parentheses, followed by a page number). The town name is found within the jurisdiction of the larger area, listed in parentheses on the page indicated in the index.
2. Having located the town name in the index, return to the prior Brigham Young University (BYU) website, http://tiny.cc/97jt5tnw0i. (BYU owns the website that must be used to access the information.) Search for the location in parentheses found in the index on the left of the page for the town of interest. For example, if interested in the Bohemian town of Pavlov or Pawlow (identical index information exists under both spellings in the index for volume 9, which is the volume for the state of Bohemia), note the name of the larger jurisdiction in parentheses and the page number.
3. Return to the BYU listings for that state and search the alphabetical list on the left for the name of that jurisdiction in parentheses. Open that part of the list on the left and locate the page number indicated in the index.
4. Alternatively, open the listings on the left to discover the required page. For example, the volume for Bohemia would look like the page illustrated in Figure 1.
5. Once the page has been found on the left, click to select it and then click on “Access this page” in the top center of the main portion of the page. The relevant numbered page will appear.
6. Scroll down the page until the jurisdiction that was listed in parentheses in the index appears. The town name will be listed within that jurisdiction listed in the index and on the page selected. In a few cases, the name of the town and the larger jurisdiction are the same, so no larger jurisdiction is listed for such places.

Information Presented for Each Town

Among other information presented for each town is the number of Jewish residents. A town with no Jews is unlikely to be of interest, though it is possible that it did have a Jewish population in the 19th century but that they all had left by 1900. Usually this would be true only of extremely small towns. The page also indicates the residents’ gender, their religious affiliation, the number of houses in the town, and the language spoken. The final column on the page has notes, represented by letters, numbers, and symbols. For an explanation of these symbols, see the abbreviations page, which can be selected on the left near the top of the list on the first page for that state in the BYU search engine. In 9 of the 14 volumes, the page listing both the letter and pictorial abbreviations is Roman viii, but for Tirol and Voralberg (volume 8), Silesia (volume 11), Galicia (volume 12), and Bukovina (volume 13), it is Roman x. For Dalmatia (volume 14) it is Roman ix.

Many Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire lived in the area of Galicia, now in Ukraine. Because the territory that became Galicia belonged to Poland before the First Partition of Poland in 1772, researchers interested in the Jews of Galicia and nearby areas⁶ also should consult the Słownik Geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego,⁷ some of whose entries are available in English translation on the PolishRoots website.⁸ The PolishRoots website also offers English-language instructions on how to use this comprehensive, 16-volume geographical dictionary of Poland, a translation of terms, and other useful information. The Słownik is extraordinarily complete and usually includes the names of towns in languages other than Polish, where relevant. If a location had both Polish and German names, it always supplies both. Unlike Prussia, however, Austria generally did not give German names to Polish locations that it acquired in or after 1772.

Another resource for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as for other German-speaking areas, is H. Rudolph’s Vollständigstes geographisch-topographisch-statistisches Orts Lexikon vom Deutschland sowie der unter Österreichs und Preußens botmäßigkeit stehenden nichtdeutschen Länder (Complete geographical, topographical, and statistical gazetteer of locations in Germany as well as Austria and Prussia, and of non-Germanic lands under their dominion).⁹ While the Lexikon does not appear online at this time, an English-language explanation of its abbreviations may be found on the website.⁹

One of the few modern gazetteers of an area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Historisches Ortsverzeichnis des Königreiches Galizien und des Herzogtums Bukowina, (Gazetteer of the former Galicia and Bukowina), by Felix Gundacker, written in both English and German, has an accompanying CD-ROM that includes the maps of the area.¹⁰ The Library of Congress’ edition lacks the CD, but the complete book with the CD is available at another Washington, DC, location, the library of the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the court district for official purposes—the official subordinate division of the Empire—was not the same as the administrative district town for the local Jewish community. Accordingly, the administrative district town for Jewish matters could be different from the usual governmental demarcation of administrative districts for all other purposes. The first large list in the Gundacker book (pages 1–193) is of the “crown land” (i.e., province); then the country of location (Poland, Romania, or Ukraine) as of the book’s date of publication (which varies for each volume); then the district court administrative district; its inferior court administrative district; the administrative town; the locality, followed by alternative spellings for that locality, if any. Column 15 in this index indicates the name of the Jewish community, and column 16 gives the name of the Jewish administrative center. If the town is not to be found on a map on the CD, column 17 notes that fact.

The first list in Gundacker’s book is followed by an alphabetical index of towns (pages 195–271). Following page XVII at the back is a map illustrating all court districts in Galicia and Bukowina, as well as the names of provinces in border areas in other countries today. The book is valuable because it indicates that the Jewish administrative districts in the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not correspond to the civil administrative districts, and the author provides a concordance in the table on pages X-11 (sic; this should be “XI” but apparently is a typographical error), which names the Jewish administrative town and its governmental administrative district. The concordance makes it possible to correlate the two systems. Researchers need this information in order to locate the area in which the town of interest is to be found, and to find clues to where any surviving records might be found in archives, libraries, or other institutions.

Russian and German Gazetteers

Two books held by the Library of Congress may be useful to those interested in the Russian Empire, one from czarist times, the other from the Soviet era. The Library of Congress has an incomplete set of the Russisches Geographisches Namenbuch (Book of Russian geographical names).¹¹ The complete set, 11 German-language volumes plus a map volume, is written in German and lists every location in Soviet Russia.

The Library of Congress also holds (on microfilm) all five volumes of Petr Petrovich Semenov-Tian’-Shanskīī, ed., V. Zvierinski, N. Filippova, and R. Maak, authors, Geografichesko-statisticheskīī slovar’ Rossīīskoī Imperīī sostavil po porucheniiu Imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago (Geographical-statistical dictionary of the Russian Empire), published between 1863 and 1865, but only volumes 1 and 5 currently appear online at Google Books.¹² This geographical dictionary, written in Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet, is the most complete czarist-era compilation of locations in the Russian Empire and is similar in structure to the Polish Słownik geograficzny. Some spellings it uses were changed under the Soviets, who abolished certain letters in the Cyrillic alphabet after the 1917 Revolution. Thus, this dictionary provides an opportunity to see the original spelling of a geographical name, which may have changed even when the name of the locality did not.

Researchers interested in the German Empire, should consult Rudolph, mentioned above, and also Meyers Orts- und Verkehrslexikon des deutschen Reiches, der freien Stadt Danzig und des Memelgebietes (Meyers location and transportation dictionary of the German Reich, of the free city of Danzig, and of the Memel territory), Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, A. G., 6th ed., 1935, plus supplements for 1937 and 1938. The publication was reprinted with a 22-page English-language researcher’s guide and translations of the introduction, instruction for the use of the gazetteer, and abbreviations in Wright, Raymond S., III, Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs.¹³

Notes

1. www.austriahungary.info/en/gazetteer1900/about.html
2. Statistische Zentral-Kommission, Gemeindelexikon der im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreiche und Länder (Encyclopedia of the communities of the kingdoms and territories represented in the Imperial Council), Vienna, 1903–908, 14 vols., Library of Congress microform 39529 and available at Brigham Young University in full-text online best accessed via PolishRoots, Gazetteer Series, (www.polishroots.org/GeographyMaps/tabid/56/ Default.aspx). No names of individuals are in these volumes.
3. Kendler, Josef [Edlen] von, Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon von Oesterreich-Ungarn: enthaltend sämmtliche Orte und deren politische und gerictliche Eintheilung, Eisenbahn-, Post-, Dampfschiff- und Telegraphen-Stationen mit Bezeichnung der Eisenbahn- und Dampfschiff-Unternehmungen, nebst den wichtigsten Ortschaften von Bosnien und der Herzegowina: ein unentbehrliches Hand- und Nachschlagebuch für Behörden, Aemter, Notäre, Advocaten, Kaufleute, Reisende, etc., etc. (Locality and Business Dictionary of Austria-Hungary: containing all locations and their political and legal divisions, railroad, post, steamship, and telegraph stations with designation of the railroad and steamship enterprises, as well as the most important locations in Bosnia and Herzegovina: an indispensable compendium and reference work for governmental authorities, local governmental boards, notaries, lawyers, businessmen, travelers, etc., etc.), 3rd ed., Vienna: F. Röllinger und Moessmer & Schulda, 1905, DB14.K46 1905a Geography & Map Reading Room. Also available in many European libraries. The book has no names of individuals.
4. http://lccn.loc.gov/94183826. When it is added, click on the link to view the entire book. As of the date of publication of this article, that link has not yet been added.
5. www.polishroots.org/GeographyMaps/tabid/56/Default.aspx
6. For a review of these and other resources in the Geography and Map Reading Room, see Luft, Edward David, “Map Resources for the Genealogist at the U. S. Library of Congress,” AVOTAYNU, Volume VII, Number 4, Winter 1991, pp. 43–46.
7. Sulimierski, Filip, Chlebowski, Bronisłlaw, and Walewski, Włladysłlaw, Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańnskich (Geographic dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and other Slavic countries], Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Artsytyczne i Filmowe, 1975-1977. DJK7 .S46 1975. Copies of the entire series in the Library of Congress are found in the European Reading Room and in the Geography and Map Reading Room. For an English-language set of instructions on how to make the best use of the Słownik, see http://halgal.com/slownik.html. Among other things, the website offers a listing of the Mormon microfilm numbers for each volume of the Słownik and a useful chart for converting the Polish adjectival form of various locations to the nominative case in Polish, useful in understanding the name of the location for those who do not understand Polish. Although all of the locations listed are in Ukraine, the chart is an example for non-Polish speakers to use to translate names for other locations in Polish and, by example, serves as a caution as to the intricacy of the changes involved in trying to change from the locative to the nominative case, which is the one used in English in such situations. Thus, to be certain that one has the correct location, the Polish locative must be rendered into the nominative case to be understandable in English.
8. www.polishroots.org/GeographyMaps/SlownikGeograficzny/ tabid/61/Default.aspx/. Google reproduces only Vol. 5 in full-text at http://tiny.cc/0gmbq. Vol. 5 covers all locations of towns whose spelling begins with KUT to MAL.
9. DD14.R8 G&M RR; and Microfilm 86/8733 (D) MicRR. An English-language explanation of the abbreviations used in Rudolph appears at www.feefhs.org/links/Austria/rudolph.html.
10. Vienna: F. Gundacker, C1998, 272 pp., including index, with preface and table of contents in English + CD-Rom. DK4600.G342 G86 1998. At press time, the 2000 edition is on order at the Library of Congress, according to Dr. John Hébert, Head of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, but has not yet appeared in the catalog. Two other Gundacker books are on order and are listed in the catalog. They are Matrikenverzeichnis der jüdischen Matriken Böhmens (Index of Jewish communal registers in Bohemia) and Matrikenverzeichnis der jüdischen Matriken Mährens (Register of Jewish vital statistics in Czech state archives pertaining to Moravia). All are available in English from the Institut für historische Familienforschung (Institute for historical family research) in Vienna, www. ihff.at/IHFFe.htm.
11. Vasmer, Max, and Bräuer, Herbert, eds., for the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, Russisches Geographisches Namenbuch (Russian geographical names book), Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1964 [i.e. 1962-64]-<1980> with explanations in German of the towns listed in Russian. Volumes 1, 2, 4 and 5 (ending with the letter M) are held by the Library of Congress, DK14.R9 G&MRR. Bibliographical references included in Verzeichnis der Quellen und Abkürzungen (List of sources and abbreviations), Vol. 1, p. xxxviii-xlii. The New York Public Library, among other institutions, has a complete set of volumes.
12. Library of Congress microfilm 92/5189 (D); see http://lccn.loc.gov/92892527. Vol 1: http://tiny.cc/1fnu6; Vol. 5: http://tiny.cc/b2uch
13. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2000, 2 vols. in 3 from the originals, Leipzig and Vienna, Vol. 1, 1912, 1,092 pp.; Vol. 2, 1913, 1,246 pp.; and Vol. 3, Appendix to Vol. 2, 77 pp. + Supplement, September 1913, 52 pp. DD14.M52 G&MR and DD14.M5 2000 LH&GRR. The 1912-1913 version is available online in full-text at http://catalog.lib.byu.edu/uhtbin/pcnum/3235298%20. The Wright version, available at http:// catalog.lib.byu.edu/uhtbin/pcnum/2712131%20, includes translations into English of the introduction, instruction for the use of the gazetteer, and abbreviations. Some maps in this version are not sharp, however, and some black spots make a few entries unreadable.
    • Edward David Luft of Washington, DC, is a frequent contributor to AVOTAYNU. A list of his publications appears athttps://sites.google.com/site/edwarddavidluftbibliography/