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Visitors at the Leipzig Trade Fair as a Genealogical Source: The Example of Hungarian Jews from Huncovce 1740-1763

Filed Under Deutschland, Magyarország By Jona Schellekens and Vivian Kahn on May 23, 2020

Leipzig is one of the oldest trading cities in the world and its Trade Fair (Germ. Leipziger Messe) is one of the oldest Trade Fairs in the world. Leipzig was at the crossroads of two important trade routes: Via Regia […]

Case Study: Tracing a German Refugee, Rosa Katz Adler

Filed Under Deutschland, Holocaust By Karen Franklin on July 13, 2016

In February 1939, Rosa Katz Adler wrote to to Mrs. Herbert H. Lehman, wife of the New York Governor. She was desperate for assistance in bringing her young daughter Lotte to the United States. Rosa’s letter is one of hundreds […]

Tracing German-Jewish Ancestry to the 17th Century — And Much Earlier, by Arthur Obermayer [AB-057]

Filed Under Collaboration, Deutschland, DNA Studies By Arthur Obermayer on April 1, 2015

 With the help of Y-DNA analysis, fortuitous acquaintanceship with an extraordinary researcher and the use of some relatively unknown sources, I have traced my Obermayer family history unequivocally to 1655 and, with less certainty, even earlier than that — a […]

The Obermayers: A History of a Jewish Family in Germany and America, 1618—2009, by Kenneth Libo and Michael Feldberg

Filed Under Deutschland, United States By Contributing Editors on April 1, 2015

The Obermayers: A History of a Jewish Family in Germany and America, 1618—2009, by Kenneth Libo and Michael Feldberg. The book contains histories and genealogies of the Obermayer, Lehmann, Sinsheimer, and Oberndoerfer families from Creglingen, Augsburg, Furth, and other towns […]

Genealogical Research and the Virtual Jewish Community in Germany Today

Filed Under Deutschland By Werner Frank on December 1, 2010

This article is adapted from a presentation at the IAJGS conference in Los Angeles, July 2010—Ed. Two Jewish communities are flourishing in Germany today, a real community and a virtual community. The real Jewish community consists of about 200,000 individuals, […]

Leading Genealogical Resource for Frankfurt am Main Jewry Now Online

Filed Under Deutschland By Arline Sachs on October 1, 2010

Personal data about virtually every Jew buried in the once-important Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, circa 1240 to 1900, is recorded in the German-language publication Ele Toldot (These are the generations) by the late Shlomo Ettlinger, a post-World […]

Resources to Find Any Location in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Similar Resources for Imperial Russia and Imperial Germany

Filed Under Deutschland, Eesti, Latvija, Lita, Polska, Беларусь, Россия, Україна By Edward David Luft on October 1, 2010

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 […]

Nineteenth-Century Jewish Civil Records In Southern Germany

Filed Under Deutschland By Ralph Bloch on July 1, 2010

This article is adapted from a presentation at the IAJGS conference in Los Angeles, July 2010—Ed.  Most Jewish genealogists researching their European ancestry eventually confront 19th-century civil rec­ords, but the variety of types and forms of such documents may be […]

Book Review: The Life of Glückel of Hameln, Written by Herself. Tran­slated and edited by Beth-Zion Abrahams.

Filed Under Deutschland By BIll Gladstone on April 1, 2010

The Life of Glückel of Hameln, Written by Herself. Tran­slated from the original Yiddish and edited by Beth-Zion Abrahams. New edition published in hardcover by the Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 2010. <www.jewishpub.org> If, as historian Jacob Shatzky once observed, catastrophe […]

Directories

Filed Under Deutschland, Israel יִשְׂרָאֵל, Methods, Polska, United States By Alex E. Friedlander on April 1, 2009

This section will discuss four categories of directories whose contents can be useful for genealogical research: city directories, telephone directories, biographical directories, and professional directories. All of these valuable reference sources can be found in the United States and internationally. […]

Personal Journeys: The Isenberg Family Comes Alive

Filed Under Deutschland, Personal Journeys By Jeffrey Arkin on December 1, 2008

The year was 1970. One morning that summer, I was exiting, quite unexpectedly, the railway station in Hamburg, Germany. It was the last place I wanted to be. I had misread the train schedule, leading me to believe I could […]

Genealogical Sources for the Jews of Southern Germany During the Pre-Emancipation Period

Filed Under Deutschland By Friedrich R. Wollmershäuser on October 1, 2008

Before 1806, southern Germany consisted of hundreds of independent territories of varying sizes. Some were owned and ruled by noble and princely families, others by bishops (and called bishoprics). The largest realms with a Jewish population were the Electoral Palatinate […]

Book Review: Posen Place Name Indexes: Identifying Place Names Using Alphabetical and Reverse Alphabetical Indexes, by Roger P. Minert

Filed Under Deutschland, Polska By BIll Gladstone on April 1, 2008

Posen Place Name Indexes: Identifying Place Names Using Alphabetical and Reverse Alphabetical Indexes, by Roger P. Minert, (Provo, UT: GRT Publications, 2004), 101 pp., soft-cover, ISBN 0-9716906-6-9. $9.95 from <www.grtpublications.com>. Note: Roger Meinert published a series of 23 books (and […]

Coming to America through Hamburg and Liverpool Part II: Crossing the Atlantic

Filed Under Deutschland, Methods, United Kingdom, United States By Harry Boonin on April 1, 2008

In Part I of the saga, “Coming to America Through Hamburg and Liverpool,” in AVOTAYNU, Vol. XXII, No. 4, (Winter 2006), pp. 15–22, we tracked the six Boonin children across Europe to Hamburg, their crossing of the North Sea, their […]

German Passports Found in Shanghai

Filed Under Deutschland By Peter Nash on April 1, 2008

This article appeared initially in The Kosher Koala, newsletter of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc., Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2008. It is reproduced with the permission of the author— Ed. Sitting at the computer, my wife, Rieke, knew […]

Book Review: Germanic Genealogy: A Guide to Worldwide Sources and Migration Patterns

Filed Under Deutschland By Edward David Luft on October 1, 2007

Germanic Genealogy: A Guide to Worldwide Sources and Migration Patterns, by Edward R. Brandt, PhD, Mary Sutter Bellingham, Kent Cutkomp, et al. 3rd edition, St. Paul, MN: Germanic Genealogy Society, 2006, 658 pp., $49 plus shipping and handling. Brandt and […]

Book Review: History of the Jewish Community of Schneidemühl 1641 to the Holocaust

Filed Under Deutschland By Carol Davidson Baird on July 1, 2007

History of the Jewish Community of Schneidemühl 1641 to the Holocaust, by Peter Simonstein Cullman. Hardcover, 390 pages + x. Bergenfield, New Jersey: Avotaynu, 2007. The title of the book really says it all. Peter Cullman has meticulously studied five […]

Book Review: Bibliographie zur deutsch-jüdischen Familienforschung und zur neueren Regional- und Lokalgeschichte der Juden, by Angelika Ellmann-Krüger and Dietrich Ellmann

Filed Under Deutschland By Edward David Luft on April 1, 2007

Bibliographie zur deutsch-jüdischen Familienforschung und zur neueren Regional- und Lokalgeschichte der Juden (Bibliography on German-Jewish family research and on the recent regional and local history of the Jews) by Angelika Ellmann-Krüger and Dietrich Ellmann, (Berlin: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), ISBN 978-3-05447-8. […]

Posen Province Archival Holdings at the Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw

Filed Under Deutschland By Edward David Luft on July 1, 2003

Edward David Luff describes his 2003 visit to the Archives and describes it holdings of genealogical interest.

The Feuchtwanger Stammbaum, by Susan Edels

Filed Under Deutschland By Contributing Editors on January 1, 1900

The Feuchtwanger Stammbaum, by Susan Edels, is the family tree of the Feuchtwanger family from Fuerth, Bavaria, Germany, of Seligmann and Fanny Feuchtwanger and their 18 children. It includes information on the family from 1769 to 2009, plus some articles […]

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